The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) published a new report this week on post-election audits and how to expand their effectiveness in bolstering trust in elections. Athena Strategies President Kathy Boockvar was pleased to participate in the workgroup of national election experts that met earlier this year to help identify these issues and strategies. The workgroup and report discussed challenges in the post-election audit landscape, including the need to better establish national election audit standards and provide more funding for election officials. The report also includes suggestions to improve best practices, organizational management, communications and multidisciplinary collaboration around the post-election audit process.
Kathy discussed the challenges and successes experienced when her office formed the Pennsylvania post-election audit workgroup and began piloting risk limiting audits in 2019, and how important it is to have consistent organizational management and effective training and continuity of operations both within and across counties.
“[Y]ou can’t talk about the theory and the math [of post-election auditing] and all that goes into it without starting and helping the counties organize from the beginning,” said Kathy. “You need auditing to be integrated into the office’s process. But in some places you might have only two people in the office, so [you have a problem] if one of them leaves or gets COVID… But the more it’s integrated with training, the better. You can’t have one person be the sole repository of information.”
Learn more about the insights of these election experts by reading the full report here: https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2023-08-29-CDT-fraudit-workshop-report-final.pdf