[Audit-engine] PR "AuditEngine" MD Pilot Report Event - Dec 13, 3:30pm ET (12:30pm PT)

Fri Dec 8 20:04:17 EST 2023

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"AuditEngine" Maryland Pilot Report Event

Discusses Audits of Rockville City and Somerset County MarylandVirtual 
Event: Dec 13, 3:30pm ET

"Our goal: audit all elections, contests, and ballots"

MEDIA ADVISORY

WHAT:A virtual meeting to report on the results of the pilot audit.WHEN: 
Dec 13th, 3:30pm ET (12:30pm 
PT)WHERE:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5747302646<https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5747302646>AGENDA: 
Review the Pilot Project report and answer any questions

WHO:Officials from Maryland Board of Elections, Rockville City 
officials, Montgomery County officials, other election officials, 
candidates and campaigns, members of the press, and election experts and 
analysts. The report will be shared with participants.

Rockville City, MD, Dec 8, 2023- Citizens Oversight, a Delaware-based 
501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, announces today that an event has been 
scheduled to review the results of the "Pilot Audit" of live election 
data in the recent November 2023 Rockville City election. This pilot 
showcases the effectiveness of the cloud-based AuditEngine platform for 
auditing elections using ballot images and other election data.

There were no significant inconsistenciesbut there were 15 interesting 
disagreements in the evaluation of voter intent in Rockville City out of 
about 12,000 ballots and across all contests. The Nov. 2022 election in 
Somerset County, MD was also included in the pilot audit project.

What is AuditEngine?Citizens Oversight, guided by Executive Director and 
Computer Architect Ray Lutz, has developed a cloud-based ballot-image 
auditing platform known as AuditEngine. It leverages the power of 
thousands of parallel computers to rapidly process all the ballot images 
created by election systems and compare the independent tabulation with 
voting system results, allowing for a detailed ballot-by-ballot 
comparison of all contests on the ballot.

Unlike other auditing solutions, AuditEngine also audits all ballots 
without using any barcodes. It compares the voter-verifiable text on 
ballot summary cards created by Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs). This 
allows AuditEngine to effectively check the voter-verifiable text and 
"skip over" the unverifiable barcodes. These barcodes have been a 
problem in recent elections, such as in Northampton County, PAwhere the 
barcodes differed from the voter-verifiable text. [Footnote 5]

Key Facts:

Citizens Oversight, Inc. is a Delaware 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization 
with primary offices in San Diego. They have developed the AuditEngine 
ballot-image auditing application starting in 2019 based on design ideas 
from around 2006.

The goal of the pilot auditis to provide a report for the Maryland State 
Board of Elections to assess whether AuditEngine qualifies for a 
state-wide contract to audit all elections in the state or as needed. 
More importantly, the results of this pilot can be used by other states 
and counties to evaluate the usefulness of this tabulation audit 
process.Cooperative Workflow Introduced

AuditEngine was significantly enhanced to improve turn-around time when 
working with a cooperating election district. There are three phases:

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    Phase 1: Prior to election day:Configure AuditEngine by using
    election data available prior to the election.

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    Phase 2: After election day,ballot images are supplied and an
    independent result is provided within ~24 hours.

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    Phase 3: the Cast Vote Recordsfrom the voting system are compared,
    ballot-by-ballot with the independent tabulation by AuditEngine,
    resulting in extensive reports and assurance that the reported
    results are consistent with the ballot images.

When using this workflow, audit results can be provided to the election 
staff prior to certification to ensure accurate election results.

Ray Lutz, Executive Director of Citizens Oversight and Architect of the 
AuditEngine system, expressed enthusiasm about results of the pilot and 
the collaboration with Maryland, stating, "We are happy to be able to 
work with officials in the state of Maryland and particularly in 
Rockville City, to test both our software platform as well as the 
logistics of cooperation, and the results were excellent."

AuditEngine operates securely in a Virginia datacenter, authorized to 
utilize up to 10,000 virtual machines in parallel to efficiently review 
all ballots by inspecting the images created by ballot scanners during 
the initial scan.

AuditEngine does not directly communicate with the isolated "air-gapped" 
computers in election offices and cannot modify official election data. 
AuditEngine provides detailed reports pointing out any discrepancies, 
and it can also provide transparency to voters who wish to review the 
details of the audit.

Lutz added, "We've discovered fascinating issues in almost all audits we 
have performed, usually regarding quirks in the election system, and we 
continue to be impressed by the overall quality of work done by election 
offices even though sometimes there is a need to work around voting 
system limitations. It is an honor to work with the State of Maryland in 
this pilot project.

"Our solution is not only competitively priced but also has higher 
performance as it audits all ballots without using barcodes, while our 
competition does not.

"We regard Maryland as the absolute leader in providing clean data 
suitable for nearly fully automated audits ballot images to build 
confidence in the outcome."

For media inquiries and further information, please contact:

Media Contact: Ray Lutz, Executive Director

email: support at citizensoversight.org

619-440-3646

About Citizens' Oversight:

Citizens' Oversight is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to 
enhancing the integrity and transparency of the electoral process 
through innovative auditing solutions.

References:1. "Case Study Report: 2020 Election Ballot Image Audits in 
Collier County, Volusia County, and St. Lucie County Florida" -- 
https://copswiki.org/Common/M1970 <https://copswiki.org/Common/M1970>2. 
"Dual Tabulation Issue in ES&S Voting Equipment" -- 
https://copswiki.org/Common/M1989/ <https://copswiki.org/Common/M1989/>

3. "2020 General Election Audit Reports for Bartow GA, Fulton GA and 
Dane WI" -- https://copswiki.org/Common/M1986 
<https://copswiki.org/Common/M1986>

4. NJ -- Three County 2022 Audit Narrative Report-- In this report, we 
provide details of many issues found by AuditEngine as the counties of 
Monmouth and Mercer were phasing in new voting 
systems.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HhAfIGlhEQUIHpyChl0uJORUmymGAZq9thdPMbKuGXs/edit?usp=sharing 
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HhAfIGlhEQUIHpyChl0uJORUmymGAZq9thdPMbKuGXs/edit?usp=sharing>5. 
*"Election 2023: County exec 'livid' at voting machine trouble but 
confident in accurate count"* 
https://www.lehighvalleynews.com/elections/election-2023-widespread-voting-machine-problems-reported-in-northampton-county 
NOTE: Citizens Oversight has proposed to PA that we use AuditEngine to 
analyze this failure because it can not only read the barcodes but also 
can read all the voter-verifiable text.

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*Ray Lutz, Executive Director*

CitizensOversight, Inc.

771 Jamacha Rd 148

El Cajon, CA 92019

raylutz at citizensoversight.org

619-820-5321

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Ray Lutz
Citizens' Oversight Projects (COPs)
http://www.citizensoversight.org
619-820-5321
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