These election auditing methods work no matter how many candidates or winners in a race. However, they would not yet work for any rank order voting system. You guys might want to work on extending the mathematics of election auditing so that they would. Kathy ---
March 30, 2008 A New Measure of Election Auditing Discrepancy Dear Friends, Good news. University of Berkeley Statistics Professor Philip Stark, submitted a new paper (still a draft) describing how to analyze election audit discrepancies to decide whether to certify an election outcome or to expand the audit sample size - to "The Annals of Applied Statistics" a couple of days ago. We now know not only the correct minimum audit sample sizes for verifying election outcomes, but also we have a procedure for calculating the confidence that an incorrect outcome was detected - given any sample size, knowing the actual discrepancies in the audit. In other words, Stark's new method for analyzing discrepancies also let's us know if the audit sample size was adequate or not. Stark's method for analyzing post-election audit discrepancies uses the maximum signed pair-wise relative discrepancy between all winner-loser pairs in each precinct (or other vote count) to calculate a test statistic; and he uses the same upper margin error bound [for each winner-loser pair-wise margin] that I have been recommending for months now. So Stark's new method is conservative because if anything it would err a little on the side of not certifying (i.e. on expanding an occasional audit unnecessarily) in the case of a correct election outcome. Stark's method for analyzing election auditing discrepancies is simple and elegant. However Stark's papers can be difficult to comprehend for persons who are not mathematicians or statisticians. As soon as I catch up on critical chores and paperwork, I plan to add easier descriptions of his latest work to my papers (below) on election auditing mathematics and procedures. Mandatory Vote Count Audit http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/legislative/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf The fundamentals of scientific election auditing described in lay persons' terms (as much as possible): Post-Election Vote Count Audits -- Probability Proportional to Margin Error Bound (PPMEB) Method http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAudits-PPMEB.pdf Stark's new paper on analyzing post-election audit discrepancies is posted here: Maximum Pairwise Relative Margin Overstatement: A Sharper Discrepancy Measure for Post-Election Audits http://statistics.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/pairwise08.pdf Stark will be incorporating his new work (above) into his prior paper (below) to provide a discussion which includes calculating election auditing sample sizes: Election audits by sampling with probability proportional to an error bound: dealing with discrepancies http://statistics.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/ppebwrwd08.pdf -------- Difficult steps come next - getting state election officials &/or state legislatures to adopt these new valid, mathematically correct, election auditing procedures for verifying the accuracy of unofficial election outcomes before the outcomes are declared official - to a desired confidence-level. Election auditing procedures currently used by the 20+ states which audit elections are virtually all inadequate, internal, and/or employ procedures which do not measure of the accuracy of unofficial election results. Some state legislatures will need to increase canvass periods to 28 days to allow enough time to manually audit mail-in and provisional ballots as well as the Election Day and early voting results. Also most states need to implement public oversight of, and participation in, ballot security and ballot reconciliation procedures - required so that election audits provide the public a way to verify election outcomes in an observable way. There is still some work remaining - to figure out the best mathematical approaches to the complexities of two-stage audits (stage one would be auditing the early and election day counts; stage two, the provisional and mail-in ballots that are often counted within 14 days after Election Day.) and to figure out the nitty-gritty of the best methods for making publicly transparent random selections of vote counts to audit. Stark's latest work is a big step forward because it means that the mathematics have been worked out now both for calculating election auditing sample sizes and for evaluating the amount of audit discrepancies to determine whether election outcomes should be certified to a desired confidence-level or rather the audit samples expanded. U.S. citizens can help promote election auditing by asking their US Representative (http://www.house.gov) to vote "Yes" on H.R. 5036. A copy of the final House Admin Substitute version of H.R. 5036 is posted here: http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/legislation/HouseAdminHR5036-MAR28.pdf Thank You! Cheers, Kathy Dopp About the National Election Data Archive: The National Election Data Archive has been organized for educational and scientific purposes of promoting fair and accurate elections by promoting public access to election records and data and by developing technology and mathematical methods to detect any voter disenfranchisement or vote count inaccuracy. Such methods include independent manual vote count audits, exit poll discrepancy analysis, and the public release and scientific analysis of election data along with public release of election records necessary to verify the integrity of elections. NEDA is a completely non-profit organization that relies heavily on the donation of time by its volunteers, many of whom are mathematicians. P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Vote Yes on HR5036 http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/legislation/SummaryFlyer5036.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
