Risk-Limiting Vote-Tabulation Audits: The Importance of Cluster Size

摘要

post -election vote-tabulation audits compare hand counts of votes in a collection of groups ( clusters) of paper records (voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT) to reported machine counts of the votes in the same clusters. Vote-tabulation audits can serve a variety of roles, including process monitoring, quality improvement, fraud deterrence, and bolstering public confidence. All of these raise statistical issues.