2018 ELECTION SECURITY PLAYBOOK
only minimal functionality as compared to a fully operational personal computer, thus minimizing the risk of unauthorized system access and code modification. Furthermore, the voting system is a standalone system without connectivity to any external network or the internet, which makes unauthorized access from a network virtually impossible. Additional technical controls are in place and required in order for the voting system to
be certified for use in the State of California. Information Integrity and Accuracy
Important administrative controls are the extensive logic and accuracy audits that are conducted before the election to make sure the voting system is properly recording the cast vote records. After the election, random audits are performed manually to ensure the paper record matches the final tally. Paper audit trails allow us to compare totals and check the results against the votes verified by the voters. Risk Limiting Audits California does not currently require Risk Limiting Audits (RLA). However, as a component of our security plan for 2018, we will be conducting pilot RLAs to ensure that the integrity of the votes cast are true and correct. Computerized systems may produce incorrect results due to programming errors or deliberate subversion. Even hand counts may be erroneous. RLA audits systematically check the election outcomes reported by vote-counting systems. Specifically, a risk limiting audit checks some voted ballots or voter-verifiable records in search of strong evidence that the reported election outcome was correct – if it was. Specifically, if the reported outcome (usually the set of winner(s)) is incorrect, then a risk-limiting audit has a large, pre-specified minimum chance of leading to a full hand count that reveals the correct outcome. A risk-limiting audit can stop as soon as it finds strong evidence that the reported outcome was correct. (Closer elections generally entail checking more ballots.) 5 In addition to the required 1% manual tally (which is a hand-count of 1% of all ballots cast), in 2018 our office will be conducting RLAs in the form of ballot-polling audits based on a random sample of ballots. This will be reviewed by academics from Princeton University, Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
5
California Risk Limiting Audits Working Group, Version 1.1, October 2012
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTRAR OF VOTERS
15
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator