What if Arizona Had Comprehensive Audit Recounts?
The forensic election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, has cost more than 100,000 hours in effort and millions of dollars in monetary cost. The process took more than five months of reviewing ballots, voting machines, and data patterns. There must be a faster, less-expensive method — and, hopefully, one that is not as easily affected by uncooperative government officials or employees. The good news is that such a strategy for auditing elections can be implemented.
The Comprehensive Audit Recount (CAR) is a strategy for auditing elections. It is designed to let the candidates, especially the losing candidates in a medium-to-large contest, pick a limited number of precincts and audit them thoroughly. By limiting the number of precincts to be audited, the CAR, at least for the first round, can be completed quickly — in about 10 days to two weeks — and can be done at a much lower cost.
The results of such an audit can be known before the official certification date of the election in most states, and such results could be used to decide whether or not the election should be certified. If no major inaccuracies or fraud are found, that should indicate trustworthiness of the election results. If, however, major inaccuracies or inconsistencies are found, that would lead to auditing additional precincts, again chosen by the candidates. If the additional precincts show more problems, the certification of that contest should be delayed pending a full investigation. All audit activities should be done in public and the audit results should become part of the official record of the election results.
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