The Report <read .pdf>
From the Press Release and Report:
Coalition Releases Audit Report on August Primary:
Raises concerns with audit credibility and
potential problems for November post-election audit.
Despite continued improvements to the published procedures, the August post-election audit observations do not inspire increased confidence. We continue to observe that voters make few errors and that properly programmed and functioning tabulators count votes accurately. However, the lack of standards and detailed guidance, and the lack of consistency, reliability, and transparency in the conduct of the audit continues.
Our further focus on the chain-of-custody surfaced another potential concern in audit credibility. We find potential risks to the integrity of and confidence in the reported results of post-election audits based on the lack of uniformly secure ballot storage and access. Looking forward, we doubt the current ad-hoc counting procedures used by most municipalities will prove sufficient to accurately and efficiently count ballots considering the expected volume in the November 2008 election.
The current haphazard ad-hoc processes are insufficient, inefficient, and are likely to break down in larger elections such as the upcoming presidential election, just as they did in the 2007 November Municipal election.
We are not questioning any individual’s integrity; however, we do not believe a secure system is one that relies on single individuals with opportunity to alter records. The lack of uniform security of the ballots diminishes confidence in the integrity of the ballots counted in an audit.
