Re: [Colorado Voter].2388 Re: Auditing subcommittee meeting at clerk convention in Colorado

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a god suggestion.  Just this morning I wrote some thoughts
down about designing a game to get this all across in a more fun, and
less loaded and threatening way than actually talking about problems
with elections.

Games like the shell game, where one player tries to hide the location
of a ball under one of three cups from the other player, can be fun
among friends, and very "educational" when a naive person encounters
con artists at a fair.  Sleight of hand and various forms of social
engineering can be amazingly effective:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_game

So I'm picturing a 2-player game where some sort of initial "deal"
provides ballot results, and player one can potentially alter the
results, and player two samples the data to try to discover if the
results are right.  There would be a big prize for player one for
successfully hiding some data, and a prize for player two for either
certifying the right outcome or for discovering a problem.

The challenge is coming up with the details in a way that would be fun
and approachable, and still teach some important lessons about audit
design.

Any ideas?

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

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 08:26:08AM -0700, Al Kolwicz wrote:
> Hi Neal,
> 
> I recommend that your group test the theory and the mechanism.
> 
> Seed a properly sized and packaged simulated dataset with known errors, and
> attempt to discover the errors using the sampling method.
> 
> Al
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ColoradoVoter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ColoradoVoter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Neal McBurnett
> Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 12:30 PM
> To: Colorado Voter Group; attendees; cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Colorado Voter].2388 Re: Auditing subcommittee meeting at clerk
> convention in Colorado
> 
> Attached is the final version of the "Colorado Law Improvements"
> document we've come up with and will present shortly.
> 
> Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/
> 
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 08:45:55AM -0700, Neal McBurnett wrote:
> > Thanks to Steve Pierson of the American Statistical Association for 
> > helping make all this happen thru his correspondence with the chair, 
> > Scott Doyle, and to many others for much work to date!  My input was 
> > welcomed throughout the meeting, and Harvie Branscomb, in absentia, 
> > also was accorded great respect.
> > 
> > They especially latched on to the brief "Colorado law improvements"
> > document that Steve and I wrote, and want to flesh that out into 
> > legislative language.  We'll have an improved version of that out soon 
> > for the subcommittee meeting today at 13:00 mountain time.
> > 
> > To access the stream, go to the General Assembly website at:
> > 
> >  http://www.leg.state.co.us/
> > 
> > Click on the "Video/Audio Broadcasts of Current Proceedings" button at 
> > the top of the page.  Once you click through, click on the link for 
> > House Committee Room 0112.
> > 
> > For more background, see
> >  Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Audits  
> > http://electionaudits.org/principles/
> 
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