Effective audit policy for voter-verified paper ballots in New Jersey

Scientists and politicians are reaching consensus that elections must be countable independently of the need to trust any particular computer software, whether that software is in a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine or in an optical scanner. Public trust in elections requires a Voter-Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB), either a voter-viewable printout from a DRE machine or (even better) an optical-scan form filled out by hand and counted by machine. In either case, the paper ballot can be recounted later, providing a way to audit the operation of the software. In 2005 the New Jersey legislature enacted a law requiring VVPBs by no later than January 1, 2008. Producing the VVPBs is not enough; to do any good they must also be audited. New Jersey’s legislature must take the next step, as many other states have done, and require a a routine audit after each election, to ensure that the machines are not miscounting the vote. A random sample of precincts must be recounted by hand, so that if there were widespread systematic fraud or malfunction, it would be detected. In this paper I will show that, taking the precinct sizes in New Jersey as an example, a recount of 1% of randomly selected precincts is not sufficient to detect fraud with high confidence elections (except in statewide races). A recount of 5% would be barely adequate, but would be quite expensive. I propose a new statutory framework that will be as affordable as a 1% recount but more effective than a 5% recount. It requires a mandatory audit of 1% of precincts, and permits any candidate to demand (and pay actual costs for) an audit of up to 7 precincts. The rule of 1%+7 will give high confidence for both large and small elections.