Multidisciplinary Conference on Election Auditing: Cambridge, Massachusetts - December 2018

这次为期一天的公开会议探讨了与选举后审计有关的科学、政策和法律问题的交叉。统计审计技术的进步表明，在保证选票被计入投票数以及选举结果已被正确宣布方面是有希望的。标准审计做法为选举官员提供了模式，以确保与举行选举有关的业务做法是按照法律和条例进行的。然而，在确保某些特定选举进程得到适当开展所需的技术方面仍然存在差距；将住所分配给正确的投票区就是其中之一。本次会议的目的是探索现有选举审计程序的范围，评估新的学术可以在哪里扩大审计技术的范围，并发现在选举领域广泛采用创新审计做法存在的法律、行政和社会障碍。这次会议将为不同的专业人士--工程师、数学家、社会科学家、法律学者和选举官员--提供一个论坛，共同探讨这些问题。将出版一份会议记录，以确保会议上讨论的学术成果得到最广泛的传播。这一全天的公开会议探讨了与选举后审计有关的科学、政策和法律问题的交叉。随着各国开始采用新的审计技术，以及该领域的学者认识到新的挑战，采用风险限制审计等新的审计技术已到了关键时刻。这些挑战包括如何在美国选举的实际环境中采用基于严格统计原则的严格审计技术，以及如何将统计审计技术扩展到各州和地方最近采用的各种比例代表制方案中。此外，最近的争议揭示了在计票之外的其他领域发展严格审计技术的价值，例如将住所分配给投票区，在这些地区，传统的界定选区的方法(例如，通过“数字和界限”)很难与地理信息系统功能的爆炸式增长相衔接。会议将为该领域的科学和工程学者提供与选举从业人员互动的机会，这将在致力于开发创新但实用的选举审计技术的学者中设定研究议程方面提供重大推动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This full-day public conference explores the intersections of scientific, policy, and legal issues related to post-election auditing. Advances in statistical auditing techniques show promise in providing assurance that votes were counted as cast, and that results of elections have been correctly declared. Standard auditing practices provide models for election officials to assure that the business practices associated with running elections have been conducted according to law and regulation. However, gaps remain in techniques needed to assure that certain election-specific processes have been properly conducted; assigning residences to the correct voting districts is one of these. The purpose of this conference is to explore the range of existing election auditing procedures, assess where new scholarship could expand the range of auditing techniques, and discover the legal, administrative, and social roadblocks that exist in the widespread adoption of innovative auditing practices in the area of elections. This conference will provide a forum for disparate professionals -engineers, mathematicians, social scientists, legal scholars, and election officials- to explore these issues together. A conference proceeding will be published, to ensure the widest dissemination of the scholarship discussed at the conference.This full-day public conference explores the intersections of scientific, policy, and legal issues related to post-election auditing. The adoption of new auditing techniques, such as risk-limiting audits, has reached a critical juncture, as states have come to adopt new techniques and as scholars in the field recognize new challenges. Among those challenges are how to adopt rigorous auditing techniques based on rigorous statistical principles to the practical settings of American elections, and how to extend statistical auditing techniques into the variety of proportional representation schemes that states and localities have recently adopted. In addition, recent controversies have revealed the value of developing rigorous auditing techniques in areas other than vote-counting, such as the assignments of residences to voting districts, where traditional ways of defining districts (e.g., through "metes and bounds") interface uneasily with the explosion of GIS capabilities. The conference will provide the opportunity for scientific and engineering scholars in the field to interact with election practitioners, which should provide a major boost in setting the research agenda among scholars working to develop innovative, yet practical, election auditing techniques.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.