Principles for Post-Election Audits: Putting It All Together

1. Principles for Post-Election Audits:Putting It All Together Panel 7 Saturday, October 27

2. Principles for Post-Election Audits: Where Do We Go From Here? • What have we learned? • election auditing is in its infancy & evolving rapidly • many points of agreement • e.g., it’s difficult to put statistics into legislative language • some more controversial ideas • e.g., responsibility for audits should be independent • Transparency! • it’s good for election officials as well as the public • Building Public Confidence • expecting routine problems & variations/descrepancies

3. What needs to be done? • to help spread the election auditing gospel • to gain more cooperation from election officials • to build information & infrastructure • to provide foundations for good legislation

4. Possible Follow-on Activities • Post-Summit Working Groups • Information Sharing • Web Information Resources • Research Coordination • Policy Development • Individual State Meetings (ala this Summit)

5. Possible Post-Summit Working Groups • Table of State Auditing Laws, Administrative Rules, and Current Developments • Glossary of Election Auditing Terms • Web Archive of Auditing Documents & Forms • Model Auditing Standards & Legislation • Election Auditing Training Materials • Data Collection Instrument Design • Statistical Sampling and Measurement

6. Information Resources & Sharing • More Face to Face Meetings • Another National Election Auditing Summit? • State-specific meetings? • Web Sites • Email list servers • Wiki's for sharing files & collaborative editing • On-line Bibliographies & Resource lists • On-line & Spreadsheet Audit Calculators

7. Election Auditing Summit Meetings in Selected Individual States? • Bring together similar mix of local and state election officials, statisticians, computer scientists, and election integrity advocates. • PLUS selected others from other states • (some via remote videoconference if necessary) • Hold in state capitol so key legislators and their staff can participate

8. Other Venues to Spread the Word • National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) • National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) • National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (NACRC) [schedules meetings in conjunction with National Association of Counties (NACo) conferences] • International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers (IACREOT) [splintered from NACRC in 1960's) • Others?

9. Data Collection • Specify what kinds of data are needed • precinct-level, by contest, equipment, type of voting • Develop standard forms for gathering data • Election equipment • Auditing & vote counting procedures • Detailed audit cost components • Etc. • Collect existing forms, training materials, etc.

10. Promising Research Areas • Sampling methods to improve efficiency • (statisticians, computer scientists) • Counting methods for accuracy & efficiency • (statisticians, industrial psychologists) • How to change norms for election auditing • (administrative behaviorists, industrial psychologists)

11. Infrastructure Policy Development • Public access to data • Transparency across all levels of voting process • Election tabulation & auditing rules & legislation • stay tuned for Panel 8!