Nobody seems nervous about the vote count in South Dakota. The margins were all big enough in our top-ticket races that no one is calling for a recount. But could we use an audit of our voting machines?
An audit is not the same as a recount. In a recount, we say (or, in South Dakota, a candidate says), “Whoa, that race was close! We’d better count all the ballots again to make sure the machines picked the right winner.” An audit is a quality-control check conducted regardless of the outcome on some sample of the ballots.
The National Conference of State Legislatures explains that a traditional audit checks a fixed percentage of ballots or a fixed number of precincts. Montana, for instance, checks at least 5% of precincts in each county or at least one precinct, whichever is greater. Montana’s ballot audits look at at least one federal race, one statewide race, one legislative race, and one ballot issue. Minnesota looks at at least two precincts in small counties and the greater of four precincts or 3% of precincts in larger counties.
A risk-limiting audit does some math. Auditors start with a specific race, then calculate the number of ballots they’d have to count to reach a statistical degree of confidence that the declared result is not an error. Consider: the margin of defeat for Initiated Measure 23 was 59.38 percentage points; the margin for Amendment R was only 1.22 points. We could audit far fewer ballots to feel confident that the machines made the right call on IM 23 than we would to confirm the result on R.
29 states and the District of Columbia require audits of their voting machines, South Dakota is one of seventeen states that has no law prescribing audits of voting machines. We test our machines before the election, but we don’t require county auditors to check the machines’ performance during or after the election to make sure they processed the ballots correctly.
How confident do you feel about your local vote-counting machines? Would you like your county auditor to do some post-election quality control after each election to make sure Donald Trump’s Russian friends haven’t done more than promote fake news, spread stolen e-mails, and sow confusion and doubt?
South Dakota would require/requisition a federal grant, appoint cronys to run the audit, sublet the subletting to a third bunch and end up with no audit and no money to perform one. Deja vu all over some more.
FBI now stands for Freaking Bolshevik Intervenors.
It does seem odd that the state doesn’t require audits of voting machines already.
I suppose their excuse is that South Dakota doesn’t use that many voting machines, unless of course they don’t want the machines audited.
Think about it. The elections are going exactly as planned for the GOP appointed persons that oversee our elections…why screw up a good thing?
I am hopeful that SoS Krebs will look at this seriously.
Remember, Roger, an audit can cover counting machines as well as voting machines.
Hey phony moderator,
The Pennington County Auditor from Arizona, said to the RC Journal she could NOT certify the Wheel Tax Vote, that only Diebold could do it, and THAT was over a year ago when you ignored the problem. Now a Presidential election has come and gone and still, our votes are not verifiable. Cory expressed NO opinion of the failed democracy and the fact that a private company owns the results of our elections when I posted her statement back then. Now we see no comments by Cory on BlackBoxVoting.org findings of wide spread tampering, exactly like the Republicans… very suspicious for the “Most Liberal” blog.
Jana, notice how there is no problem with this lack of ballot accountability on DFP even though ballot tampering has been brought up many, too many, times with NO response by Cory. As though there is a puppet master saying: “Don’t talk about that”. “Focus instead on the things that anger and divide Liberals”. Cory was successful in getting me to refuse to vote for ANY Democrats, in violation of my personal policy of voting for the person, not the Party. Good one Agent Provocateur, but it was a one time deal.
Is there an actual site of people who are actually liberal and want to improve life for EVERYONE in South Dakota? I’ve wasted enough time and brain on this farce.
With wingnuts in control of all state offices, how much pull do you think one Cory has? Apparently quite a bit. Why aren’t you-Barry Freed- knocking on the statehouse doors demanding answers instead of shoveling the blame on DFP?
I’m not sure I should bother to respond to someone who opens and closes his comment with personal insults.
I stand by the validity of everything I’ve written. I can only apologize for not writing more.
It’s all Cory’s fault
Sample size, sample size, sample size… And not only that but repetitions. If we really wanted to acheive statistical reliability, we’d conduct 3 repetitions with the same sample size and sample frame, but randomly select numbers of machines. More work but the result would be almost “bullet proof”!