POST-ELECTION AUDITS IN INDIANA
Overview
The Secretary of State (SOS), in coordination with VSTOP, conducted the State’s first post-election audit pilot in Marion County in 2018. In 2019, the Indiana Legislature authorized the SOS to conduct Risk-Limiting Audits (RLAs) in Indiana, now amended as Post-Election Audits (PEAs). Since the pilot RLA in Marion County, VSTOP has continued to grow and fine-tune PEA policies and procedures.
Audits began, and have remained, voluntary through a designation process: County Election Boards sign and adopt a unanimous resolution requesting audit designation from the SOS, who then approves the designation and authorizes VSTOP to conduct the audit. As VSTOP has expanded this activity, county-level interest in PEAs continues to grow year after year. VSTOP has now conducted 45 Post-Election Audits in 41 Indiana counties (Clark, Lake, Marion, and Porter have each been audited twice). All PEAs conducted in Indiana have affirmed the functionality of the voting systems, resulting in correctly reported election outcomes for each audited contest.
The “Audit Soup” Analogy
When you cook a pot of soup, do you eat the whole thing just to check if it tastes right? Of course not! You take a spoonful, give it a stir, and taste again. Each bite is a little different, but after a few good tastes, you’re confident the whole pot is delicious. That’s essentially how a post-election audit works. Instead of examining every single ballot, auditors apply statistical methods to select a random sample of the ballots cast in an election, inspect them, and record the results. The result is the same kind of confidence you’d have in your soup: a well-founded assurance that the election outcome was tabulated and reported correctly, without needing to recount every ballot to know it.
Why Do We Do Post-Election Audits?
Customized Video Courtesy of The Elections Group