trials and tribulations of boulder's election audit

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I once again hear sad things from the canvass board about the audit.
I may have some aspects wrong, but this is what it sounds like:

 - As we warned before they even decided on this equipment, they don't
 have a report ("Abstract of Votes Cast") that permits a proper audit
 to take place because the subtotals don't correspond to piles of
 paper that can be found and hand counted.

 - Amazingly, it will not examine any absentee or early votes at all -
 about half of the total ballots cast will be left out of the audit.

 - The machines to be audited were selected before the results were
 provided.

 - The audit is taking place before they even validate the number of
 ballots cast.  This traditional "canvass" should happen first in
 order to ensure that all the ballots are accounted for and available 
 to be audited.

Thankfully, this time the canvass board has gone thru a lot of hassle
and has gotten some cooperation from the elections folks to at least
validate a few numbers on the Abstract of Votes Cast: election day
results in three precincts.  This will require them to bend the rules
on "random selection", which is a shame, but having three numbers
validated is better than zero.  But it certainly isn't enough to
provide much confidence in the results.

This should be compared to the Eagle County audit in the primary, in
which they did resolve most of these problems, and to previous
elections in Boulder in which we used other methods to audit some
absentee and early results.

Please join us in protesting the procedures, and in calling on the
next clerk, and the next Secretary of State, to properly implement the
law we passed in 2005 and do real audits in the future.

Thanks,

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/