should machine count results be known by people doing audits?

[Douglas Cragoe]

I’m preparing a report on the Los Angeles County 1% manual recount that happens for every election. The machine generated batch tally reports are kept secret while the human hand tally is being done. The reason given is that if the humans know ahead of time what the machine count is, then they could cheat to get their tally to match the machine tally.

This seems wrong to me. Is this the right way to do an audit?

[Kathy Dopp]

Good question Doug.  The machine counts must be publicly published first prior to an audit. But the machine counts should not be supplied to the auditors during the manual counting process of the audit.  This is slightly contradictory, but it is most important that prior to any audit in any field that the data to be audited is set and shown to add to the reported total results.  But during the manual counting phase audit, it would be best if the auditors are not specifically told which of the reported audits units they are counting, nor what the publicly reported total for that audit unit was.  I suppose if one of the auditors helping to work in a team doing the manual counting has a fantastic memory for a slew of numbers, they may know what the reported result was for that audit unit, which is often a precinct or batch of absentee ballots counted together,...

The protocols for the manual counting procedures should preclude any auditor from being able to manipulate the audit total for the batch of ballots they count to the previously reported tally because, as Ray Lutz has pointed out, the manual counting procedure needs to be publicly observable, preferably live-streamed to the Internet but also with representatives appointed by each candidate or political party in sufficient numbers to be able to observe the manual counts of each manually counting team and the recording of the manual count results.  

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 1:39 PM Douglas Cragoe <cra...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I’m preparing a report on the Los Angeles County 1% manual recount that happens for every election.  The machine generated batch tally reports are kept secret while the human hand tally is being done.  The reason given is that if the humans know ahead of time what the machine count is, then they could cheat to get their tally to match the machine tally.   

This seems wrong to me.  Is this the right way to do an audit? 

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 Kathy Dopp, Natick, Mass., MS mathematics
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK, Jr.
"It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled” Mark Twain
 “A Christian who does not protect creation . . . is a Christian who does not care about the work of God." Pope Francis

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[Clove Haviva]

Why does it seem wrong? It sounds right to me. -Clove

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 2:39 PM Douglas Cragoe <cra...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I’m preparing a report on the Los Angeles County 1% manual recount that happens for every election.  The machine generated batch tally reports are kept secret while the human hand tally is being done.  The reason given is that if the humans know ahead of time what the machine count is, then they could cheat to get their tally to match the machine tally.   

This seems wrong to me.  Is this the right way to do an audit? 

[Allegra Dengler]

Hand counters should not know the machine tally before they count.  I saw a hand count audit  in NY where the counters kept recounting the ballots until they could get them to agree with the machine count.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/CANqewJQtWum%3DzC9bsQijRwhdUQFG%3DehdDv67qvohCoedLHzskg%40mail.gmail.com.