Content
Next Mera Council Meeting
MERA Monitors: Volunteers Needed
MERA Joins Advancement Project in Challenging Bureau of Elections
Post-Election Audit Proposal Refined

  When: Sunday, July 27, 2008, 12 noon - 3 p.m.
Where: Urban Options in East Lansing

The public is cordially invited to attend.

 

MERA Monitors

MERA is seeking volunteers for four-hour shifts on Primary Election Day, August 5, to serve as nonpartisan Election Integrity Monitors in a pilot program to prepare for the Fall elections.

Volunteers will receive written instructions and credentials under the "Challenger" law, but will not be addressing individual voter problems. Monitors will assess ballot, tabulator and AutoMark security, instruction to voters, management of machine malfunctions, and handling of absentee ballots in the precinct, and will conduct occasional exit interviews with voters outside the polling place.

Assigned voting locations for monitoring will be in three counties. In Washtenaw County, locations will be convenient to Ann Arbor. Interested potential Washtenaw volunteers are encouraged to call Michael-David BenDor at (734) 484-1628, or email md@bendor.org. To participate in Allegan and Berrien Counties, volunteers can call Pat Foster (269) 561-5268 or sign up online.


MERA Joins Advancement Project in Challenging Bureau of Elections

On Monday, July 9, MERA representatives planned to join with the Advancement Project's Senior Attorney, Bradley Heard and NAACP and ACORN representative Jerome Reide at a scheduled meeting with Chris Thomas, Director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections to discuss common concerns about Bureau of Elections action to disenfranchise Michigan voters.

The areas of concern included:
 

• The cancellation countdown and postcard purge initiated in July and August of 2006
• The cancellation of registrations of Michigan voters who receive drivers licenses from other states
• The rejection of new voter registrations when voter identification cards posted to the voter are returned as undeliverable
• Instructions to election officials regarding the new photo ID law that do not appear to comply with the law

When the Advancement Project informed Mr. Thomas of these concerns by letter before the scheduled meeting, he cancelled the meeting. Subsequently, the Advancement Project issued a press release challenging Mr. Thomas to cooperate and "do his job to protect the franchise for all Michigan voters."

The MERA Committee on the Cancellation Countdown is continuing to work with the Advancement Project and other allies to bring these issues to public attention so they can be addressed before the November election.


 
MERA's proposed legislation for post-election audits of the vote has now gone through two rounds of refinement in response to conversations with national allies in the State Audit Working Group and Verified Voting's audit list service. Further comments and suggestions are invited on the current draft. Please send comments to shepard@acd.net.

The MERA Audit Proposal
The Michigan proposal was guided by the work of the National Audit Summit's State Audit Working Group, which refined principles and best practices for post-election audits from expert opinion and experience across the country.

Central to the MERA proposal are statistical or "risk-based" audits, which are the most efficient and effective way to confirm election night results. The statistical audit would begin right after the election and if its findings showed a different winner of a contest, then the audit results would bind election officials to certify the corrected result.

In the proposed audits, precincts are selected randomly and the paper ballots are counted manually (hand to eye) and then compared to machine tallies. To insure independence, audit teams are selected for each county by a central audit board, under the authority of the Michigan State Treasurer.

A novel feature of the MERA proposal is an election night audit in each precinct. One contest is selected at random and hand counted to detect significant errors in the performance of the precinct's tabulator.

Following a Minnesota law (see report Appendix 1, Subd. 4 and 8), the proposal creates a strong market incentive for vendors of electronic voting equipment to make sure their equipment functions correctly and to eliminate security vulnerabilities. The vendor of any brand of electronic equipment that fails an audit would be penalized significantly.

Strong transparency provisions ensure public oversight of the entire audit process, from setting standards and designing the statistical methods to final reporting. Other provisions permit challenger groups to conduct hand count audits under the supervision of election officials, and encourage candidates, parties, issue committees and others to initiate selective and targeted audits.

There is a striking final provision in the proposal. A new election would be mandated for any audited contest if the "State Vote Audit Board cannot determine an outcome of the contest with, in its judgment, a reasonably high level of probability. "

Taken as a full package, the proposal would provide Michigan with the highest level of assurance of election accuracy of any state in the country.

Comments Are Still Welcome
MERA invites comments and suggestions on the proposed legislation for Post-election Audits in Michigan. Please send comments to shepard@acd.net.


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