Talk:Election audit

Details on states
I really appreciate the work which has gone into creating and revising this page on an important topic. The article cited some of the state-by-state differences from VerifiedVoting.org, so I added a table summarizing key information from there and from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Numbersinstitute (talk) 18:45, 2 April 2018 (UTC)


 * @Numbersinstitute The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has state-specific details about election audits. rootsmusic (talk) 14:41, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

US states
Today the page says:


 * According to information compiled by Verified Voting, as of early 2018, only Arizona, Colorado[13], Minnesota, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, and (in legislation that will not be fully implemented until 2020) Rhode Island require local election officials to perform audits that:
 * are completed promptly, before official results can be certified;
 * expand the size of the sample whenever the audit detects discrepancies in the original sample; and
 * are binding on the official results.
 * If followed by local election officials, such requirements create an opportunity to detect and correct any outcome-altering miscounts (whether caused by accident or fraud) that affected the preliminary Election-Night counts.


 * An additional 19 states prescribe audits that check a flat percentage, typically between 1 and 3 percent, of voting machines or precincts.

I don't see that list of 6 states on Verified Voting. AZ and MN only expand to the county, not state. So do AK, HI, NC, NY, OR, WV, Some of the rest require investigation or action to solve the problem, and that could include a full recount if needed.

All 6 do hand counts, though that's not mentioned as a criterion, and some others do too (AK, NC, OR, WV).

None of the 6 audits all races, which seems pretty important. I wonder if we could focus on hand counts which are binding on the results?

I'm sure something important was meant, so I wanted to talk about it here. Numbersinstitute (talk) 22:06, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Response: Before I address each of your questions individually, I want to say that it's clear to me that you and I are envisioning two different types of article--both of which have merit. They should be able to co-exist in the same article.

I was envisioning an introduction to election audits (both process audits and results audits)--that would enable a reader new to the topic to grasp general concepts and purpose. For example, I didn't originally include information about hand-counting, chain of custody, methods of random selection, transparency, or any other audit methods because in my judgment, discussion of audit methods isn't necessary to give readers an understanding of the scope and purpose of election audits--which is what I originally intended the article to accomplish. I would prefer to keep the material that comes before your table aimed at this general-interest audience, so as to keep it clear, readable, and not overwhelming.

In contrast, you seem to envision a comprehensive compendium of information about all 50 states' unique practices, along with discussion of some of the possible options for the future --at least with regard to results (not process) auditing. The detailed table you added cured some of the omissions you perceived in the original article. I see that your recent material goes even deeper--to the level of discussing individual vendors, types of software, and projects within states--material that, I'll be frank with you--I think belongs in source material rather than a Wikipedia article. But I'm flexible--just please leave the material before the table at a level that is readable by--and of interest to--a reader who wants a general understanding of the topic without becoming an expert, and you can go as deep in detail below the table as you want. I see you already added some material about hand-counting at the end.

Just FYI, it dismays me that my original article was thin on process auditing as it was, and your much deeper focus on the details of results auditing has made the content even more unbalanced in its treatment of process vs. results auditing. (That's not your concern, though.)

Now, the individual questions. Your critique of the section you quoted above is useful. Knowing that neither you nor I are supposed to include original material (if we follow Wikipedia's rules), I see that I need to go back and try to summarize VV's information more clearly or with more obvious fidelity to how they characterized the individual states' practices. Specifically:

1) You said you didn't see that list of six states on the VV website. My phrasing "information complied by VV..." might be misleading. More precisely, I should have written something like "information from state profiles provided by Verified Voting..." (I'll go ahead and make that edit now.) This refers to the state profiles that you can find if you type in a state's name on the "State Audit Laws Database." To find the six that have requirements that create the opportunity to detect and correct outcome-altering miscounts (i.e., timely, expansion to a full recount, and binding), you need to read the VV profiles one by one.

2) Notice that I characterized those three features (timely, expansion to include the full race, and binding), as the features that "create an opportunity to detect and correct outcome-altering miscounts." Or to put it another way, notice that I didn't write that they GUARANTEE correction, or that other variable features (e.g., handcounting) are not also important or interesting. But if a state's election-results audits are not timely; don't expand to the full race when discrepancies are found; or are not binding on results, they are not going to be able to correct wrong election results--handcounted or not, and even in those races that are included in the audit.

3) For AZ, VV's profile could be read to say that the expansion would be limited to a single county, or that an audit *could* be expanded to recount an entire race. Going behind the summary to the Arizona state laws that VV linked, it's clearly a state-level committee that "establishes designated margins for each contest to be used during the audit to determine when the audit should be expanded." I do wish the VV profile was more specific--see my #5 comment below.

4) About Minnesota's expansion requirements, the VV profile is clear that the audits can and should be expanded statewide under certain (not all) circumstances: "If the results from the countywide reviews from one or more counties comprising in the aggregate more than ten percent of the total number of persons voting in the election clearly indicate that an error in vote counting has occurred, the secretary of state must notify the post-election review official of each county in the district that they must conduct manual recounts of all the ballots in the district for the affected office using the procedure outlined in section 204C.35."

5) I'll look more closely at AK, HI, NC, NY, OR, and WV. When I re-read the VV profiles, I agree with you that some of these states could be added to a list of states in which audits are rigorous enough to create an opportunity to correct wrong outcomes, based on info in the VV profiles. I don't know what I'll think if I see that VV characterized a state to require a "full recount" if in fact that state's requirements limit expansion to one county, even for an audit of a statewide race. I, for one, wouldn't consider that a governor's race (for example) had been subject to a "full recount" if only one or two counties had expanded their audits and the rest hadn't. I suspect that material from the February 2018 report from the Center for American Progress would now make a better basis for this whole section than the VV profiles--as I said, I'll take a look and think it through.

Prairiefire2 (talk) 06:56, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * That's a very helpful discussion. I agree with keeping more generality before the table and more specifics after it, though future contributors may not abide by that. Perhaps having two broad headings would signal to future contributors as well as readers that this is the intended organization. Something like "General concepts and purpose of election audits" and "Audit procedures in individual areas"?


 * I agree process audits need more attention in the article. Today the article has two sections whose titles refer to results audits and none on process audits, so a first step could be to create a section on process audits. These seem to be the main focus when international observers go to watch elections. Election monitoring covers who the observers are, not what they do. Some of its sources may have more on process. Electoral_fraud has a little bit. Even if a section on process audits is brief, it'll be a placeholder to augment later. It's important.


 * If you or I or anyone finds that VV isn't complete or accurate, I think it's important also to cite the law or guideline that has more detail.
 * No original research says "The phrase 'original research' (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist... Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources."
 * Duke University says laws are primary sources, though others don't, but they're certainly published sources, so can be used in moderation, without counting them as original research.


 * I appreciate your clarification that the sentences I wondered about include the idea of expanding to a full audit of the state on state-wide races. I tried to make that distinction in the table, though I missed it on Minnesota. When you find more clarity in state laws, please consider adding that to the table too, as I did on California where a law signed last October restricts the manual count.


 * Numbersinstitute (talk) 13:29, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

"election audits" in Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election
Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election has a section heading for "election audits". I'd prefer clarifying that heading, but at minimum I suggest emphasizing how the activities described in that section didn't have the attributes of a good election results audit (as defined on this page). rootsmusic (talk) 02:04, 6 September 2023 (UTC)