The win is illustrated in the note below. It is an extract of an email I was copied on 10/28/24. The red highlights are mine. There are a lot of people to thank but that is not the purpose of this article. This is a call to action….and it needs to be done quick. The good news is that the requests are not so difficult such that they can be done quick and they don’t take money and I don’t want money.
If your state or county does have risk limiting audits, but they have not accounted for the Absentee or Early vote in the sampling schemes for such audits, or the sampling schemes are undefined and in that “gray area” this approach could apply and help even at this late date.
If this approach can be applied in your state it has the potential to reveal cheating after the election. By having that potential it could also be a deterrent and prevent cheating from occurring in the first place. In Delaware, no court battle was required….to achieve the result above. There are simple action items that should be done NOW before a winner of the election is announced. Please read and if you feel this has merit please act or forward to people you know who act regarding election integrity issues. The action could be as simple as sending emails to appropriate authorities and having those emails acknowledged on record before the results of the election are announced.
Details:
Over 2 years ago I discovered a gaping quality control hole in the Election Systems in Delaware. In practice, I noticed that the post election “risk limiting audits”, did not include any sample schemes to account for the Absentee or Early Vote ballots. I reviewed our code. I believe that it explicitly requires audit of the Absentee and Early Vote Ballots. The audit procedures that have been in place, may have been in place prior to the advent of “Early in Person” voting and simply continued along as routine even after the advent of Early Voting. In practice, they only sampled the “Day of In Person” voting machines.
Here is an excerpt of the code.
The Department shall audit all results of 1 randomly selected election district in each county and………
The key word is “ALL”
Now in Delaware this language is explicit. It says ALL. Even if it is not stated explicitly in your state, I say the argument can work. Anyone that would argue that the sampling scheme should not account for the Absentee and Early Vote in essence must argue they believe it is OK to leave 20%-30% of our vote more vulnerable to electronic tampering than the rest of the vote. I hope you would agree that would be a ridiculous argument. Authorities did not do that in DE. There was silence, ignoring, never responding to the issue for a long time……… but never a counter argument…….and then the result above.
Even if it is not explicitly mentioned you could argue that the sampling scheme should include the Absentee and Early Vote. I made both arguments. I said I believed it is explicitly required, and I also said if anyone would like to make a counter argument please stand up and provide your name and stand behind that argument and I will make you famous! I don’t know which portion of the arguments won the day, but without a lawsuit you see the result above. We still need to be diligent on the details of the audit but first things first.
The links to articles providing more background and details on this topic are here if you have an interest.
https://delawarecounts.com/publish/posts/detail/147244507?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
https://delawarecounts.com/p/proof-of-process-problems
THE CURSE BECOMES A BLESSING?
Many people like myself who are interested in Election Integrity believe the vulnerabilities associated with Early and Absentee voting are a big concern. I believe the sampling rate on the risk limiting audits are too low, and when localized to one geography (the precinct) would be too easy to cheat. If however, you can get agreement for such audits to include the Absentee and Early Vote Ballots, hmmmm, could the perceived curse be a blessing in disguise?
In any proper audit to check the machines, you must account for ALL pieces of paper (ballots) for the defined geography. In a state like Delaware, where we used to only be able to vote “in person” at one voting location on the day of the election that would restrict the audit to the singular polling location for that Election District (precinct). You might be talking 3-4 machines and 1000 +/- ballots. Very easy to account for total pieces of paper, and undervotes. Undervotes are ballots where a person may have chosen to not select any candidate in that particular race. It all has to reconcile.
Early Voting: Early voting changes the game. It is typically done at Early Vote Locations. At Early Vote Locations you can often vote the ballot design for a larger geography like an entire county. THEREIN LIES THE BLESSING. If one must audit the early vote ballots for a precinct, THEY MUST TOUCH EVERY BALLOT IN THAT LARGER GEOGRAPHY to insure that they have found every single ballot for that precinct.
You can not take “the machines word” as to where such ballots might be located because the purpose of the audit is to check on the machines. The ramification is that now, for that little precinct audit, you get a confirmation of the entire total “pieces of paper” ballot count for the entire county or that larger geography. It does not give you the count for each race on each ballot throughout the county, but if you get a total count of ballots, many electronic stuffing schemes will be caught. The audit of the individual race results in the randomly selected precincts may reveal “flipping” schemes.
NEED TO ACT NOW:
At this late date you can make the logical arguments above to the appropriate authorities in your state. Get it on record, get it in email, get that email acknowledged. If you have resources, submit a legal case to the courts with a date. In my opinion, and also a hat tip to Marley Hornik on this, it needs to get done before the election to have a better chance of having standing after the election. In some ways the “standing” argument from the courts perspective is that: if this was a concern Mr. Plaintiff, why didn’t you say it before the election. You are coming to me now after the election because your candidate lost. GET THE REQUEST ON RECORD BEFORE THE ELECTION RESULTS ARE ANNOUNCED!
Recommendations: Step by Step.
1. Review the Code: Find the portion of your code that references the post-election audits in your state, and develop the argument that shows that this implies the audit of all the vote for whatever geography is defined.
2. Review the Logistics of Your Early Voting Law: See if it agrees with the argument above and that it will require touching ALL ballots in that geography.
3. Write Lawsuits or Letters on the Record: Write them to those responsible for performing the post election audits. Do it now so you have better chance of having standing after the election.
4. Let people know. We do want this word to get out to any cheaters. Either it will be a deterrent OR they will have to stand up and argue why they think it acceptable to leave the Absentee and Early vote excluded from the critical Quality Control process they say is required for all the other ballots and that they say justifies the use of the machines.