The National Election Data Archive supports the "Emergency Assistance for Secure Electoins Act of 2008", H.R. 5036, but would like to see it made more effective with these amendments.  The National Election Data Archive proposes cost-effective legislation to require auditing elections for States. This cost-effective legislative and administrative proposal for conducting scientific post-election audits can be applied to any state. It was contributed to by three of Utah's county election officials, as well as contributed to by prominent Ph.D. mathematicians and statisticians who are experts in election auditing, a New Hampshire State Election Official, and many others: Mandatory Vote Count Audit

Methods for analyzing discrepancies found between machine and manual counts during post-election audits can determine whether to certify an election outcome or to expand the manual audit.

The fundamentals of scientific election auditing are described here in lay persons' terms (as much as possible): Post-Election Vote Count Audits -- Probability Proportional to Margin Error Bound (PPMEB) Method

The derivation of the formulas for the Probability Proportional to Margin Error Bound (PPMEB) method for determining samples for Vote Count Audits are posted here for any mathematician to check: http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/PPMEB-Auditing.pdf

Critique of the Verified Voting McCarthy/NJ Election Audits. Election audit proposals should not be modeled on Verified Voting's election audit model. Unfortunately, some states like New Jersey have adopted incorrect, inefficient vote count audit methods being recommended by Verified Voting, The Brennan Center, and The American Statistical Association; and states like Florida and  Colorado are considering them.

Please send a copy of The National Election Data Archive's Statement in Support of "The Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008" to your U.S. Representative.  On January 17, 2008 U.S. Representative Rush Holt introduced the "Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008". Here is a one page summary of HR5036. Please contact your U.S. Representative and ask him or her to vote "Yes" on H.R. 5036.

Were the 2008 U.S. Presidential "Super Tuesday" Primary Vote Counts Accurate?

Press Release on our analysis of New Hampshire Democratic Primary Election shows that Clinton received a higher percentage of votes when ballots were counted electronically by Diebold, and Obama received a higher percentage of votes when ballots were counted by hand. The pattern is consistent with outcome-determinative vote miscount. An academic study purporting to rebut this pattern by Mebane, Wand, and Herron assumes, without supporting evidence, that unaudited Diebold-counted machine counts of prior 2004 and 2006 elections were correct. In the partial manual recount, there were many discrepancies but not in an amount that would reverse the outcome between Obama and Clinton. However,  New Hampshire does not reconcile its ballots to account for all printed, cast, counted, uncounted, spoiled, and unused ballots. Nor does New Hampshire verifiably secure its paper ballots after the election and stores its ballots in opened cardboard boxes using labels that can be peeled off and re-adhered. Its memory cards (e-ballot boxes) are picked up after the election by the same private company that programs the ballots. The only conclusion it is possible to draw is that "we do not know" whether or not the New Hampshire 2008 primary election outcomes were accurate or not. (This same conclusion can be made about most U.S. elections today unfortunately.) New Hampshire does use some of the best methods for hand-counting paper ballots, as explained in this powerpoint presentation by its Deputy Secretary of State, Anthony Stevens. Kucinich ran out of funds for a full recount. Obama who was within 3% of winning failed to act on his opportunity under New Hampshire law to request a full hand recount for only $2,000.

This PowerPoint presentation explains the concepts of Mandatory Post-Election Vote Count Audits

Model Election Auditing Legislation - written and reviewed by Ph.D. statisticians and mathematicians. This is the most scientific election auditing legislative proposal available.

Mathematician Ousted From Conference Hotel in MN for passing out this information on election auditing: Everything You Need to Know About Election Auditing Was it done to hide these facts? History of Confidence Election Auditing Development (1975 to 2007) & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals

What did the National Election Data Archive accomplish in 2006?

On September 20, US Count Votes, DBA The National Election Data Archive filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Central Division, challenging the legality of the Utah's election statute 20-A which is being cited by Summit County Clerk to deny public access to election records, including voter registration records which the National Voter Registration Act requires to be public. The defendants, Summit County, Summit County Clerk and Utah Lt. Governor Gary Herbert were served on Monday 09-24-2007 and have 20 days to respond. Read the full press release.

NEDA responds to the California Secretary of State post-election auditing standards working group report.

Scientific Election Audit Reveals Voting System Flaws, But Questions Remain Unanswered. A critique of Cuyahoga County Ohio's November 2006 election results.

NEDA's Evaluations of Current Federal Election Reform Legislation: HR811 Support Packet including a rebuttals to the National Association of Counties' concerns about HR811; and a list of organizations supporting HR811; and Analysis of the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act", House Resolution 811. NEDA's Public Testimony on The Ballot Integrity Act (S1487) to the Senate Rules Committee; and rebuts the July 25, 2007 Senate Rules Cmte Election Reform Panelists. 22 Amendment Suggestions for the 'Ballot Integrity Act of 2007' to improve its election audit and citizen oversight provisions. An Analysis of the Ballot Integrity Act, S1487 proposed by Senators Feinstein, Dodd, Sanders, Inouye, Obama, Brown, Leahy, Menendez, Kennedy, and Clinton. Important Facts About HR811, "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act". Please Support Clean Elections in 2008. Contact your US Senators to ask them to support S559 with the same amendments that were made to HR811. Four Election Integrity Groups Release a Concept Proposal for Federal Election Reform Legislation. See this joint press release by National Election Data Archive, BlackBox Voting, Democracy for New Hampshire, and Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections OH.

Federal Election Audit Costs shows that election audits proposed by Holt, Nelson, Clinton, and Tubbs-Jones would cost more than audits with higher sucess rates. These proposed election audits would have low success rates. See "Fool Me Once: Checking Vote Count Integrity" Holt, Nelson, Clinton and Tubb-Jones intend to correct some of the significant, if unintended consequences of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. See our Press Release. The Holt and Nelson bills, when they were first introduced in committee needed crucial improvements in order to effectively ensure election outcome integrity.

Press Release Explaining Election Audits and a new report on Tiered Election Audits are easy for election officials to use to determine the amount of vote counts to manually audit to ensure the accuracy of election outcomes. Tiered election audits can be designed to give any desired probability for detecting one or more corrupt vote counts whenever enough vote counts are corrupt to alter an election outcome.

Please read these Recommendations for Federal Legislation to Ensure the Integrity of U.S. Democracy. Unaudited U.S. elections are wide-open to vote fraud and innocent error today. Citizen oversight is necessary.

It is not whether or not to audit elections, but how. The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) explains a new formula developed by Ronald Rivest of MIT to estimate the minimum audit amounts that are mathematically sufficient to detect vote count errors that could seat wrong candidates. NEDA's paper and an easy-to-use spreadsheet to allow any layman to calculate how many vote counts to audit for a particular election contest, can be found at ElectionArchive.org.

ElectionAuditEstimator.pdf
HowManyToAudit.xls

Kathy Dopp and Frank Stenger developed a method to exactly calculate the minimum audit to ensure to any desired probability that initial election outcomes are correct. The Election Integrity Audit is posted on the National Institute of Standards and Technology voting system page and here is a proposed state audit bill for Utah based on it and a program to calculate the number of vote counts to audit.

Our goal is to ensure election integrity. Please sign up to receive announcements and help ensure make sure that votes are counted accurately!

What is the evidence of vote miscounts in America? Read The Academic Debate Surrounding the 2004 Presidential Election. or read what experts say about U.S. voting systems .

Independent Audits and Election Data Monitoring are needed to ensure election outcome integrity. Independent election audits could detect outcome-altering vote miscount in auditable voting systems.

Here is NEDA's own proposed audit bill for Utah . No state currently conducts sufficient election audits (including Connecticut and a proposed audit for New Jersey, California, and other states). A public National Election Data Archive would enable forensic analysis of detailed vote count data and citizen oversight to detect irregular vote patterns that result from vote tampering or error.

If Detailed election data is made public, then manual audits can be verified and independent analysts could alert us to suspicious vote counts. No states yet publicly release detailed election data in a timely fashion! Counties report election results after aggregating counts, thus hiding evidence that votes may be padded for one candidate in one vote type and wrongly subtracted for a different candidate in another vote type or other tampering or error. (See this example .)

Under most state laws, we have a legal right to obtain detailed election data and records that are necessary to verify the integrity of election outcomes.

Please help us by donating and sign up to receive our email announcements and help us to defend American democracy.

EXIT POLLS:

Exit poll analysis by Ron Baiman and Kathy Dopp shows that the 2004 Ohio exit poll discrepancies are consistent with outcome-altering vote miscounts. The exit poll analysis was born out later when Richard Hayes Phillips studied the actual paper ballot records. Declaration of Richard Hayes Phillips, Sept. 1, 2006. Statistical methods can determine if exit poll data is more consistent with vote miscounts or exit poll error. The 2004 Ohio exit poll analysis of the Election Science Institute was mathematically invalid and all attempts to dismiss the evidence of vote miscounts in the 2004 presidential election failed.

The discrepancies between election results and exit poll results in the 2004 presidential race have not been explained and are consistent with significant vote count errors. Examination of limited election data shows irregular patterns of vote counts in Florida, Ohio, Washington, New Mexico , and other states. We cannot know the full extent of problems until we collect and analyze the data .

We released a scientific paper , May 2005, updated September 8th, that shows that the 2004 presidential exit poll discrepancies were consistent with vote miscount.The exit pollsters had wrongly dismissed the exit poll discrepancies, claiming that they were caused by exit poll response bias. Our earlier scientific paper on the 2004 election exit poll discrepancies was released in March 2005 and its summary refute the pollsters' claims.

It has been officially confirmed (by the exit pollsters themselves) that on election night the final set of exit polls showed John Kerry defeating George Bush by 3% of the popular vote and a clear majority of 316 electoral votes. Our statisticians analyzed Edison/Mitofsky's own explanation of their exit poll discrepancies, and found serious flaws in their argument. Exit polls have been used for years to detect corruption of official vote tallies - most recently in Ukraine.

PROBLEMS WITH VOTING SYSTEMS: Elections is the only major industry not subjected to routine independent manual audits to detect and prevent electronic errors. The Brennan Center study, The Machinery of Democracy shows that one person can undetectably rig state-wide elections. More than 27,000 reports of irregularities in the 2004 election were submitted to the independent " Election Incident Reporting System "; New Mexico had the highest rate of under-votes in 2004. The GAO recently reported that electronic voting systems have caused vote miscounts and recommended routine election audits.

Please sign up to receive our email announcements and help us to defend American democracy.