University of New Mexico Political Science Professor Lonna Atkeson recently took part in a press conference at the Bernalillo County Voter Warehouse, announcing the results of an audit study of voting results from the 2006 General Election and how the state can use that information to ensure fair elections.
Photo: UNM Political Science Professor Lonna Atkeson
Joining Atkeson at the conference was David Becker, Project Director for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Making Voting Work initiative, Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, and New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera.
In 2007, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed a bill providing for random voting system audits after every statewide general election. The purpose of the law is to ensure the accuracy of the voting systems in each election.
The 2006 Post-Election Audit study was the first of its kind in New Mexico. The study was led by Atkeson together with a team of election experts from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Utah. Visit: Election Audit to download the report.
The study was done to make sure that New Mexico counties follow the guidelines set up in the 2007 law, and to serve as a guide for the eventual creation of state election audit standards starting with the upcoming 2008 General Election. New Mexico will begin conducting a required audit of two percent of voting systems statewide following the 2008 General Election to assess the performance and integrity of New Mexico’s election system.
“This study allowed us to evaluate, assess and experiment with hand counting procedures to provide recommendations on post election performance audits,” Atkeson said. “It also allowed us to test and compare machine to hand counts and machine to machine counts. What we learned here will benefit election administrators in New Mexico and nationally.”
The recommendations of UNM-led study include:
Ballot reconciliation – Ensuring that the number of voters, ballots cast, and ballots provided to a location match
Ballot organization – Ballots need to be organized into small batches for potential auditing
Transparency – All steps and aspects of post-election audits must be open to public input and observations and results should be available to the public
Audit team selection – An independent and effective audit team is vital for accurate results
Sampling of voting system – Voting systems sampling should be transparent, use simple and random sampling and should be done on Election Day
Chain of custody – Each County should develop a chain-of-custody procedure for audits
Forms and audit logs – Counties should develop documentation for post-election audits and provide quick results to the public
Reporting – Results from election audits should be released on the County Clerk’s Web site and the Secretary of State’s Web site as soon as possible after completing the audit. These results should be downloadable for public examination
Voter intent standards – Election officials should develop precise voter intent standards, which should be communicated to audit team members in training
Hand counting procedures – Ensuring an audit supervisor is in charge of the audit to coordinate and facilitate hand counts of votes in a timely and efficient matter, in addition to other duties
Voter education – Provide information to all voters about the use of the straight party option with paper ballots
When problems arise – Additional procedures should be developed for problem resolution found over the course of the audit
The audit is funded by the Pew Center on the States’ Make Voting Work initiative and is one of more than 20 pilot projects being undertaken with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts and JEHT Foundation throughout the United States. Additional funding support has been provided by the Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver office and the N.M. Secretary of State Mary Hererra.
Media Contact: Benson Hendrix, (505) 277-1816. e-mail: bhendrix@unm.edu
Posted by bhendrix at September 25, 2008 11:03 AM