Mark Halvorson is the director and co-founder of Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota (CEIMN). In 2004, he traveled to Ohio to observe the recount. CEIMN was founded in the wake of what happened there, its goal to ensure that votes are counted accurately. They seek “to [restore] the integrity of our electoral system through the implementation of:
* Accurate recording, counting, and reporting of all votes cast.
* Random hand recounts that are part of routine audits.
* Consistent enforcement of election procedures to ensure that everyone who wants to vote can do so without difficulty and to prevent all forms of vote fraud.
* Public oversight (eg., of voting machine software source code) and non-partisan administration of the election system.” (CEIMN website)
Halvorson is a big fan of mandatory manual audits*.
Audits are critical for protecting the integrity of the election process by providing an independent check on the accuracy of the election outcomes. Minnesota, widely considered a model for election administration, will have the opportunity during the audit and the recount, to demonstrate how accurate, transparent and fair elections should be conducted.The national spotlight is on Minnesota right now because of the closeness of the Coleman/Franken Senate race. At this point, a little over 200 votes separate the two candidates. If Franken prevails, he could bring the Democrats a bit closer to a filibuster-proof Senate, so a lot is at stake. A statewide recount was automatically triggered by the close contest.
While we await that recount that begins November 19, a post-election audit is being conducted at this very moment. Minnesota is one of only 16 states that mandate this, and it was first used in place in 2006. The state is comprised of 4,123 precincts and 87 counties. 200 public-minded, democracy-loving, citizen volunteers are among those observing roughly 5% of the ballots from a minimum of 202 precincts across the state.
The audit takes about ten days. Each of the 2.9 million ballots cast in last week’s election will be examined and tallied by hand. Since Minnesota state law mandates paper ballots, touch-screen machines play no role here. The audit looks at three races only: President, US Senate, and US Representative. If the audit shows a discrepancy from the machine tallies of Election Day of over .05%, more precincts will be audited.
Halvorson explains how it works:
There are three escalation stages in the audit law. If a discrepancy occurs in just one precinct, greater than 0.5% compared to the election day tally, then three more precincts are audited. If a discrepancy is found in just one of these then a county-wide count will occur, and if a discrepancy in one precinct occurs in the county-wide count, then it will require a race-wide count.
Parenthetically, he adds “In 2006, no counties were required to escalate due to the accuracy of the machines.”
On the other hand, I would point out that even a small discrepancy can make a huge difference when spread across the state. It all adds up. Bob Sternberg wrote in Tuesday’s Star Tribune: “If that discrepancy rate [.00056, in 2006] occurred statewide in the current Senate race, it could potentially change more than 1,600 votes -- eight times the margin that currently separates Franken and Coleman.”
When I asked Halvorson about this, he replied that because we can’t know whom the discrepancies will favor, and because there are actually three candidates as well as several write-ins, for the time being, this race is literally too close to call.
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