This analysis lays out why the three counts in Georgia did not confirm the vote count. The entire report is posted here.
The BMDs used there have similar security flaws to the ESS Expressvote XL that we are trying (so far unsuccessfully) to keep out of New York. Stark reports “Moreover, most voters used demonstrably untrustworthy ballot-marking devices; as a result, even a perfect hand count or audit would not necessarily reveal who really won.”
Allegra
When Audits and Recounts Distract from Election Integrity:
The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election in Georgia
PHILIP B STARK
The 2020 U.S. Presidential election in Georgia illustrates unrecoverable errors that can render recounts and audits ‘security theater’ that distract from the more serious problems rather than justifying trust.
Abstract: The U.S. state of Georgia was central to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election, including a phone call from then-president Donald Trump to Georgia Secretary o fState Brad Raffensperger asking Raffensperger to ‘find’11,780 votes.
Raffensperger has maintained that a‘100% full-count risk-limiting audit’ and a machine recount agreed with the initial machine-count results, which proved that the reported election results were accurate and that ‘no votes were flipped.’
While there is no evidence that the reported outcome is wrong, neither is there evidence that it is correct: the two machine counts and the manual ‘audit’ tallies disagree substantially,even about the number of ballots cast.
Some ballots in Fulton County, Georgia,were included in the original count at least twice; some were included in the machine recount at least thrice.
Audit hand count results for some tally batches were omitted from the reported audit totals: reported audit results do not include all the votes the auditors counted.
In short, the two machine counts and the audit were not probative of who won because of poor processes and controls:a lack of secure physical chain of custody, ballot accounting, pollbook reconciliation, and accounting for other election materials such as memory cards.
Moreover, most voters used demonstrably untrustworthy ballot-marking devices as a result, even a perfect hand count or audit would not necessarily reveal who really won.
True risk-limiting audits (RLAs) and rigorous recounts can limit the risk that an incorrect electoral outcome will be certified rather than being corrected.
But no procedure can limit that risk without a trustworthy record of the vote.And even a properly conducted RLA of some contests in an election does not show that any other contests in that election were decided correctly.
The 2020 U.S. Presidential election in Georgia illustrates unrecoverable errors that can render recounts and audits ‘security theater’ that distract from the more serious problems rather than justifying trust.