Basis for Public Confidence:
1. Election night counts:
1. What do you do to make sure that election night counts are observed by citizens and representatives of the parties, candidates, and advocates related to ballot questions?
2. Can individual concerned citizens observe the counts on election night?
3. What would an individual have to do to be able to observe your tabulating procedures on election night?
2. Inviting public scrutiny:
a. Do you invite citizens here in the county to observe your procedures?
b. Would you allow them to observe if they approach you and ask to observe?
c. Would it be a good idea to urge the public to come in and observe, to inform them and reassure them about what you are doing?
3. Inviting all parties, and advocates related to ballot
questions, to observe:
a. Do you invite representatives of all of our parties here to observe all the procedures here?
b. Do you allow all parties and representatives of all candidates and advocates related to all ballot questions to observe all the procedures?
c. Which procedures before the election are open to scrutiny?
d. Which procedures after the election are open to scrutiny?
4. Computer Experts:
a. Did you work with computer experts to design or evaluate your procedures?
b. Who did you work with?
c. Do you hire computer tech people to observe or verify what happens when repairs are made to your equipment during, before and after elections?
5. Citizen Election Integrity groups:
a. What citizen election integrity groups have approached you with their concerns?
b. What concerns did they have? (Contrast the reply with statements from local election integrity groups, which can be located at:
http://www.votersunite.org/info/groups.asp
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/regional_election_integrity_organizations
Comparison to the same machines in other counties or
states:
Note: Research can be done at
http://www.votersunite.org/info/messupsbyvendor.asp (by vendor)
http://www.votersunite.org/info/failuresbystate.asp (by state)
6. Use of other jurisdictions’ information about the same
equipment:
a. Have you looked at other states’ (or counties’) problems with this equipment?
b. Have you gotten any useful tips?
c. Have we had the same problems here?
7 Audits:
a. Do you perform audits to get independent verification of the computers’ election results?
a. What auditing procedure did you use on these computerized machines?
b. How many machines did you audit?
c. Describe the specific steps you took during your audit to be sure that the count was correct?
8. Comparison to other industries, where computer results
are always verified:
a. For touchscreen voting machines: What proof do you offer the public that the machine recorded the voter's choices?
b. For touchscreens and optical scanning vote counting machines: What proof do you offer the public the machines counted the votes accurately?
9. Consistency between voter-checkin at polls, precinct
totals, and county totals
a. Do you verify that the computers' results at the different levels are consistent with each other?
b. Do the precinct totals match the number of voters who checked in?
c. Are the precinct totals an accurate tabulation of the individual machine totals?
d. Are the county totals an accurate tabulation of the precinct totals?
10. Enabling the public to verify:
a. Do you post machine totals and precinct totals at the poll sites so they are available for public inspection?
b. Do you post the machine and precinct totals online for the public to review?
c. If not, how is the public supposed to feel like they are part of the election process, and that they can confirm its accuracy and fairness?
11. Securing Paper Ballots:
a. Where are they stored?
b. Who has access to them while they are stored?
c. Do you invite all parties and advocates related to ballot questions to observe them (or the locked door) during storage until the final certification?
d. Can you show me the secure location? The kind of locks and seals you use?
12. Guarding Secure Areas:
a. Are ballots, voting, counting and tabulating equipment kept in secure areas?
b. What kind of procedures do you use to safeguard your secure areas?
c. Do you try to keep your secure areas as secure as the lobby of a big office building, with a guard and security cameras?
d. How would you compare your security procedures to that of a bank?
e. Do you use sign-in logs to record all access to the secure areas?
f. How do you make sure that at least two or all parties can observe what happens when people go into your secure areas?
g. Do you use surveillance cameras here to keep watch over the secure areas? If not, why not? If so, who watches the feed from the cameras?
13. Tipoffs of Problems that need investigation:
a. Did any machines record an unusually high or unusually low number of votes?
b. Did any of the ballot contests record an unexpectedly high or unexpectedly low number of votes?
(1) If so, what is your explanation for that?
(2) Who have you consulted with to figure it out?
c. With touchscreens, did voters complain of difficulties in selecting any ballot choices, such as vote-switching on the screen or difficulty getting the screen to show their choices accurately?
14. Complaints from voters about access to voting:
a. Did you get complaints from voters whose registrations were not in the poll books?
(1) How many?
(2) What recourse did these would-be voters have to vote in this election?
(3) Will the provisional ballots be counted? Who decides? What are the criteria you use?
b. Did these same problems happen in previous elections? What steps did you take to solve them?
15. Adequate equipment fairly distributed:
a. Were machines distributed equally throughout the county based upon the number of registered voters?
b. Were wait times longer in some precincts than others? If so, what accounts for the disparity?