Should Jill Stein ask for a "risk-limiting" audit? [View all]

Last edited Mon Nov 28, 2016, 09:07 PM - Edit history (1)

From a November 18, 2016 article:
"USA Today: Still Time For An Election Audit"

Computers counted the vast majority of the 130 million votes cast in this year's election.
Did human error, computer glitches, hacking or other problems change the outcome?
About 25 percent of voters used machines that do not generate a paper trail.
Any hacking, glitches or other errors that affected their votes could be undetectable.
But the other 75 percent of the vote, including the key states of Michigan and Wisconsin, could be double-checked in various ways.

A full manual recount of the paper records would be definitive, but that's unnecessarily difficult, expensive and time-consuming if the results are actually right.

There's an easier way.

A "risk-limiting" audit is an audit that manually examines a random sample of the ballots in a way that has a large chance of detecting and correcting incorrect results.
If the reported winner of a contest really won, a risk-limiting audit generally needs to examine only a small fraction of the ballots.
But if the reported winner actually lost, a risk-limiting audit has a large chance of indicating that a full hand count is needed to set the record straight.

Risk-limiting audits are a crucial check on election integrity and accuracy even when elections are not controversial and margins are wide.
They have been endorsed by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration and many organizations concerned with election integrity.
Colorado law requires risk-limiting audits in 2017, and California law requires them for deploying some new voting systems.

There is no federal law mandating election audits.
A number of states perform some kind of audit, but our research shows those audits have little or no chance of detecting and correcting erroneous results.
To audit this election effectively will require immediate legal action.

More: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028290706