Election Procedures: Manual Recount

A number of states provide for a manual recount of a small sample of the ballots cast as a way to detect voting system errors. In California, although there is a requirement for a one percent manual recount, there are no rules on how this should be carried out. If not done carefully, however, the recount will not accomplish the task assigned to it. In particular, it may fail to detect election fraud committed by hackers inside or outside of the elections department.

The manual recount is intended to discover if the equipment and procedures that are used to count the votes produce the same results as humans would produce by visually viewing the ballots to determine voter intent.

Optical scan voting machines are the type most commonly used, with nearly 70 million voters expected to use this type of equipment in 2006, according to Election Data Services (http://www.electiondataservices.com/EDSInc_VEStudy2006.pdf).  There are several sources of potential error when using an optical scan voting machine:

1. Hardware error - The ballot scanning equipment does not properly recognize the marks made by the voter.

2. Software error - The software in the ballot scanning equipment does not keep accurate count of the votes.

3. Voter error - The voter has not followed instructions when marking the ballot including using an inappropriate ballot marking pen or pencil. This is most likely to occur when voters fill out their ballots away from staffed polling places.

4. Zeroing error - The ballot scanning equipment has not been properly initialized to set the accumulated vote counts at zero before ballots are scanned.

5. Setup error - The ballot scanning equipment has not been initialized properly so that the votes are associated with the proper candidates and measures.

6. Fraud - A hacker has somehow modified the equipment so as to cause the vote totals to be reported in error. The hacker may be either inside or outside of the elections department or may be an employee of the equipment vendor.

Hardware and software errors are not intentional. They are often the result of poor design decisions. They may result in frequent errors which are easy to detect or they may affect votes only in unusual circumstances. The latter may be quite hard to detect because the recount may miss the ballots containing the errors.

Voter errors are usually the result of poor voter training and/or not supplying system-compatible marking pens or pencils. Since voters may choose to use whatever marking device they have at hand, it will probably be necessary to manually scan all such ballots and hand transfer votes to other ballots if needed.

Zeroing errors must be completely eliminated by good design. Unfortunately, they are usually the result of hacking or purposeful design to enable fraud.

Setup errors are typically discovered through the Logic and Accuracy testing performed by the elections department staff. However, it is not clear whether the tests performed are adequate to detecting all possible setup errors. This is particularly the case with ballot scanners that must accept any ballot style used in a county. Such non-precinct-specific scanners are used for early voting, absentee, mailed and provisional ballots.

Purposeful Fraud

Purposeful fraud is much harder to detect. It is in this case that the manual recount must be used very judiciously, as the fraudsters may know much more about the intimate details of the election equipment and procedures than those who are searching for the fraud.

A clever hacker may use numerous tricks to try to prevent detection. This is why the election laws typically prohibit having the machines connected into any networks and require a close watch by elections staff over anything which gets attached to the machines, such as memory cards.

In order for the recount to detect fraud, it is necessary that the small sample of ballots used for the recount have a high likelihood of including the ballots for which the illegal hack has modified the vote. This requires that the ballots selected for recount must not be known, or be predictable, before the close of the polls. Most importantly, it means that all ballots must have an equal chance of being chosen for the recount, because if it is unlikely that certain ballots will be chosen, those would be ideal ballots to falsify without fear of detection.

Important requirements are:

1. The vote totals from all precincts must be made public before selecting the precincts to be recounted. This allows observers to see if the recounted vote totals match the machine totals.

2. Precincts chosen for the recount must be selected randomly, such that there is no way for anyone to know in advance which precincts will be chosen.

3. All precincts must be in the pool of potentially selected precincts. If any precincts are not in the pool, those are the ones that an insider will choose to hack into.

4. The ballots chosen must include not only the ballots cast at the polling place, but also the early, mail, absentee and provisional ballots. The polling place ballots should be accounted for separately from the ballots counted in the elections department office.

Election officials have an interest in keeping the number of ballots recounted small, both to keep the cost low and the recount time short. So it is important that the recount not be biased toward small precincts. The more ballots that are recounted, the greater the chance of detecting any errors.

Finally, there must be election accountability. If the recount turns up differences between the machine count and the manual count, these differences must be fully accounted for. It is NOT enough to simply replace the machine count with the manual count for the precincts involved. If errors are found in one or more precincts, it must be assumed that there are errors in other precincts, too, and so additional randomly selected precincts must be manually recounted. If these show that there are even more errors, then ALL precincts must be manually recounted.

Laws and regulations regarding manual recounts should specify such procedures, the actions to be taken in case of discrepancies in counts, and the consequences should errors be found.

Reporting Errors

The operation of our election systems must be as transparent as possible. It is highly desirable that the public be notified when errors are found, even if the elections department is able to recover from those errors. At present, Registrars of Voters for the most part tell the public that no errors are ever found, in order to enhance their reputations and to keep the public unaware of problems. This is unacceptable, as such lying only further undermines public trust in our election system.

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