From raylutz at citizensoversight.org Fri Dec 8 20:04:17 2023 From: raylutz at citizensoversight.org (Ray Lutz) Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2023 17:04:17 -0800 Subject: [Copsmedia] PR "AuditEngine" MD Pilot Report Event - Dec 13, 3:30pm ET (12:30pm PT) Message-ID: <27283c8f-2211-4c18-99a5-36ba1afa2cea@citizensoversight.org> * ** 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/5747302646AGENDA: 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: * Phase 1: Prior to election day:Configure AuditEngine by using election data available prior to the election. * Phase 2: After election day,ballot images are supplied and an independent result is provided within ~24 hours. * 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 2. "Dual Tabulation Issue in ES&S Voting Equipment" -- https://copswiki.org/Common/M1989/ 3. "2020 General Election Audit Reports for Bartow GA, Fulton GA and Dane WI" -- 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 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. * *Ray Lutz, Executive Director* CitizensOversight, Inc. 771 Jamacha Rd 148 El Cajon, CA 92019 raylutz at citizensoversight.org 619-820-5321 * ### * -- ------- Ray Lutz Citizens' Oversight Projects (COPs) http://www.citizensoversight.org 619-820-5321 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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