Bernoulli Ballot Polling: A Manifest Improvement for Risk-Limiting Audits

DOI10.1007/978-3-030-43725-1_16MaRDI QIDQ6166537zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Bernhard, Ronald L. Rivest, Philip B. Stark

Publication date 3 August 2023

Published in Financial Cryptography and Data Security (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.06361, https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129973

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Voting theory (91B12) Computational methods for problems pertaining to game theory, economics, and finance (91-08)

Abstract: We present a method and software for ballot-polling risk-limiting audits (RLAs) based on Bernoulli sampling: ballots are included in the sample with probability $p$, independently. Bernoulli sampling has several advantages: (1) it does not require a ballot manifest; (2) it can be conducted independently at different locations, rather than requiring a central authority to select the sample from the whole population of cast ballots or requiring stratified sampling; (3) it can start in polling places on election night, before margins are known. If the reported margins for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election are correct, a Bernoulli ballot-polling audit with a risk limit of 5% and a sampling rate of $p_0=1\mathrm{\%}$ would have had at least a 99% probability of confirming the outcome in 42 states. (The other states were more likely to have needed to examine additional ballots.) Logistical and security advantages that auditing in the polling place affords may outweigh the cost of examining more ballots than some other methods might require.

Recommendations

• k-Cut: A Simple Approximately-Uniform Method for Sampling Ballots in Post-election Audits
• Election integrity audits to ensure election outcome accuracy
• Conservative statistical post-election audits
• Auditing Hamiltonian elections
• A sharper discrepancy measure for post-election audits

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1226876 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3080959 (Why is no real title available?)
• Conservative statistical post-election audits
• Model assisted survey sampling.
• Sequential Tests of Statistical Hypotheses

Cited in

(5)

• A sharper discrepancy measure for post-election audits
• k-Cut: A Simple Approximately-Uniform Method for Sampling Ballots in Post-election Audits
• Election integrity audits to ensure election outcome accuracy
• Auditing Hamiltonian elections
• ALPHA: audit that learns from previously hand-audited ballots

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