Welcome to the Elections web

Oversight of Election Processing

Overview

The Elections "web" of the copswiki platform provides an extensive database of elections audit information.

• The California Secretary of State no longer provides these reports after 2010. See the CA SOS Web Site.

Why do we do this?

People talk about how important paper ballots are so elections can be audited. Unfortunately, paper ballots are no better than touch screen machines if no one ever reviews them. Fortunately, some states provide systematic auditing procedures. In California, a 1% manual tally is mandated. What we find however, is that many counties conduct their manual tally improperly, and the Secretary of State no longer reviews the results of the 1% manual tally audit. As citizens, it is our job to oversee our own elections process. We really can't put our complete trust in any agency or officials.

Oversight Procedures and Best Practice Documents

Election Oversight Procedures

• Welcome Election Oversight Newbies -- A starting point for new arrivals to our election oversight project
• State Election District Targeting Procedure -- Decide which counties are most important using Pareto (80/20) principles and locate recent audit documents.
• Requesting Information Procedure -- How to request information from elections officials.
• Reporting Issues -- Report issues to COPS and/or to govt officials.

• Polling Place Oversight -- Tips for providing oversight at polling places
  • Precinct Roster Review -- This review is conducted after the election when the voter rosters become available.

• Election Office Oversight
  • Early Voting Oversight -- What to do during early voting processing
  • Provisional Oversight -- How to perform oversight over provisional ballot review.

• Election Audit Oversight
  • Snapshot Notification Phase -- Details how to notify elections officials in the target district.
  • Election Audit Best Practices -- Audits must be conducted according to specific criteria to be considered "clean"
  • Random Draw Oversight -- What to do during the Random Draw, including getting the Snapshot file prior to the draw.
  • Manual Tally Oversight -- What do do during the manual tally phase, including review of manual tally reports.

• Oversight Suggestions In Arizona And Florida -- Specific suggestions for volunteers who are providing oversight to Florida and Arizona in the 2016-08-30 Primary
• Election Oversight Florida 2016 November -- Florida is a battleground state and here is specific information for volunteers in that state.

Audit Database

This web is primarily organized as a database where each data item is a separate topic file, which has both structured fields and attached documents, and covers the post-election audit of a specific election district and election event. In some cases, we have gone further in our review of the election by doing additional review of available data. In such cases, those additional extensive reviews are contained sub-webs, and typically have precinct-by-precinct data as collected in our oversight project.

First, there are Election Districts. Each district may have any number of Audits linked to it. Election Districts are defined using the Contact Form.

• All Election Districts
• Create a New Election District

• All Audits
• Create a New Audit Topic

• Large File Uploader -- Allow people to upload large files using generic log-in information.

Infrastructure

There are a number of infrastructure topics which are used to create this dynamic and structured wiki.

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Navigate

• All Election Districts (Add)-- List of all districts in ST_DistrictName format, where ST is the state abbreviation.
• All Audits (Add) -- List of all audits sorted by District

Audit infrastructure topics

• Election District Topic Template, Election District Topic Header, Election District Topic Footer, Contact Form -- Election Districts Infrastructure
• Audit Topic Template, Audit Topic Header, Audit Topic Footer, Audit Form -- Audit Topics are related to each Election District.
• Audit Infrastructure -- This list.

Elections Web Utilities

• Web Topic List - all topics in alphabetical order
• Web Changes - recent topic changes in this web
• Web Notify - subscribe to an e-mail alert sent when topics change
• Web Rss, Web Atom - RSS and ATOM news feeds of topic changes
• Web Preferences - preferences of this web