Policy & Advocacy

Election Auditing Resources Page

If you are an ASA member interested in working on election issues, contact the ASA's director of science policy.

Election Auditing-General

• ASA Actions
  • ASA sends letter supporting Philip Stark et al. white paper, "Risk-Limiting Post-Election Audits: Why and How," and suggesting election officials and legislators follow the paper's guidance in implementing risk-limiting audits, 11/8/12.
  • Board endorses the use of risk-limiting audits: 4/17/10; press release.
  • Board endorses Election Auditing Principles; 9/15/08 news release.
  • Board issues position on electoral integrity: 3/17/08 news release.
• JSM 2012 presentations:
  • Philip Stark, The Will of the People and the Luck of the Draw: Using Statistics to Limit the Risk of Wrong Electoral Outcomes (57.6 MB) (Session 169)
  • Arlene Ash, Preventing Fraud Versus Preventing Voting (Session 488)
• State audit laws
  • Summary of audit laws by state
  • New Jersey's audit law, widely considered the most "statistical" audit procedure enacted by any state
  • A Florida Joint Audit Working Group White Paper for the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections Consideration of Audit Legislation in 2008
• Reports
  • Letter urging NIST, and participants at its Workshop on a Common Data Format for Electronic Voting System, to facilitate effective vote tabulation audits in Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, from participants of October 2009 Election Audit Working Meeting, 10/29/09
  • Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Audits, principles 5-7 of which ASA has endorsed
  • League of Women Voters Report on Election Auditing
  • Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections, a Brennan Center for Justice report by Lawrence Norden, Aaron Burstein, Joseph Hall, and Margaret Chen
  • Post-Election Audit Standards Working Group Report: Evaluation of Audit Sampling Models and Options for Strengthening California's Manual Count, a report for California Secretary of State Debra Bowen
  • Voluntary Voting System Guidelines Recommendations to the Election Assistance Commission, by the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee, 8/31/2007
• Other Resources:
  • Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota’s State Recount Laws Searchable Database
  • ElectionAudits.org has information about and videos from the fall 2007 election auditing summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • Philip Stark’s election auditing page
  • Joe Hall's election auditing bibliography: v3.0
• Articles
  • "Florida 2006: Can Statistics Tell Us Who Won Congressional District-13?" Arlene Ash and John Lamperti, CHANCE Vol. 21.2, 2008, p. 18. Due to the high public interest in article, Springer has allowed the ASA to post the article online and give free public access. The article can be downloaded here.
  • Thinking Outside the Urn, Arlene Ash and Philip Stark, Amstat News, June 2009.
  • Statistics Can Help Ensure Accurate Elections, David Marker, John Gardenier, and Arlene Ash, Amstat News, June 2007, p. 2
  • Roles for Statisticians in Elections, John Gardenier

Election Auditing-Methods

• Variable sample-size audits (including "risk-limiting audits," where the percentage of units audited is optimized to minimize risk of an incorrect outcome)

• "Implementing Risk-Limiting Post-Election Audits in California", Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Luke W. Miratrix, Philip B. Stark, Melvin Briones, Elaine Ginnold, Freddie Oakley, Martin Peaden, Gail Pellerin, Tom Stanionis, and Tricia Webber, June, 2009.
• Conservative Statistical Post-Election Audits, Philip Stark, The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2(2), 2008, pp. 550-581
• A Simple Rule of Thumb for Election Audit Size Determination, Ronald Rivest
• On Estimating the Size and Confidence of a Statistical Audit, Javed A. Aslam, Raluca A. Popa, and Ronald L. Rivest
• On Auditing Elections When Precincts Have Different Sizes, Javed A. Aslam, Raluca A. Popa, and Ronald L. Rivest
• Percentage-Based versus Statistical-Power-Based Vote Tabulation Audits, John McCarthy, Howard Stanislevic, Mark Lindeman, Arlene Ash, Vittorio Addona, and Mary Batcher, The American Statistician, 62(1), 2008, p. 11. Longer version: Percentage-Based versus SAFE Vote Tabulation Auditing: A Graphic Comparison
• A Simple, 3-Step Audit Sample Size Calculation for Election Contests, Howard Stanislevic, John McCarthy, and Mark Lindeman, 10/18/2007
• Recommended Audit Procedures, Ohio Joint Audit Working Group, 6/2/2008
• A Sharper Discrepancy Measure for Post-Election Audits, Philip Stark
• Election Audits by Sampling with Probability Proportional to an Error Bound: Dealing with Discrepancies, Philip Stark, 2/20/2008
• "Risk-limiting post-election audits", a 10/2/08 seminar by Philip Stark at Kansas State Department of Statistics.



• Fixed-Percentage Audits

• Procedures for California's 1% Manual Tally, Joseph Hall
• Improving the Security, Transparency, and Efficiency of California's 1% Manual Tally Procedures, Joseph Hall
• NY Election Audits: Is Three Percent Enough?, Howard Stanislevic



• Method-General

• Report and Analysis of the 2006 Post-Election Audit of Minnesota's Voting Systems, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota, April 2007
• The Role of Dice in Election Audits, Arel Cordero, David Wagner, and David Dill, 6/15/2006