{"id":5294,"date":"2024-06-04T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bsu.edu\/vstop\/?p=5294"},"modified":"2025-03-21T13:43:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T17:43:16","slug":"johnson-county-primary-voting-machines-were-accurate-audit-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bsu.edu\/vstop\/2024\/06\/04\/johnson-county-primary-voting-machines-were-accurate-audit-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnson County Primary Voting Machines Were Accurate, Audit Says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Johnson County primary voting machines were accurate, audit says<\/h1>\n
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Elissa Maudlin<\/a><\/p>\n

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June 3, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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VSTOP officials work on Johnson County\u2019s election audit Monday at the Johnson County Courthouse in Franklin.Elissa Maudlin | Daily Journal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Johnson County voters can be confident their votes were counted properly.<\/p>\n

The county\u2019s election board participated in a post-election audit Monday conducted by the Voting System Technical Oversight Program, or VSTOP. It was the first time the county participated in the program, which checked that the equipment and procedures used to count votes worked properly and the election presented the right outcome.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion of the audit, 118 ballots were audited. There was a 100% match rate, meaning there was a 99% confidence rate that the machines functioned correctly and all election outcomes were correctly reported.<\/p>\n

Election audits in Indiana are not mandatory and VSTOP is the only group authorized by Indiana to do audits officially, said Matt Housley, VSTOP election systems audit specialist. The group\u2019s first audit was in 2018 and Johnson County is the 26th post-election audit it has completed.<\/p>\n

VSTOP uses the Stark Audit Tool, named after Dr. Philip Stark from the University of California Department of Statistics. VSTOP is not able to touch the votes, as only election personnel and their vendors are authorized.<\/p>\n

Dr. Chad Kinsella, VSTOP co-director, said the audit is not a vote recount but instead uses a sampling of the votes. Johnson County\u2019s vendor MicroVote Systems produces a digital record of the ballot called the Cast Vote Record, or CVR. The auditing machine compares the CVR to the Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail, or VVPAT, to ensure both records match.<\/p>\n

The audit had a 1% risk limit, the designated percent chance the audit would not detect a potentially incorrect election outcome, Housley said. That means there is a 99% confidence level.<\/p>\n

Housley said there is no way to get to a 100% confidence level unless there was a recount of the votes.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecounts are very expensive and they take a lot of time and, of course, the recount will just look at all the ballots and there is not a guarantee that there won\u2019t be new errors in counting the ballots \u2026 \u201d said Dr. Jay Bagga, VSTOP co-director. \u201cBut with losing that one percent coming down to 99%, you are doing a fraction of the work that the recount will do, it\u2019s incredibly efficient \u2026 \u201c<\/p>\n