- Procedural audits, sometimes called “forensic,” “compliance,” or “performance” audits, review if election laws and procedures were followed, including ballot chain-of-custody
- A procedural audit in Utah found that two counties there had violated state law and put election security at risk
- The North Carolina State Board of Elections, if not the state auditor, should include procedural audits in its post-election reports to the General Assembly
How do we know if we can trust election results?
As I have previously noted, “A republic only works if people believe their collective votes matter.” If the public does not have faith in elections, they lose faith in the legitimacy of the government and its institutions. History is replete with examples of governments that have fallen after they lost legitimacy.
To raise trust in elections, they should be verified through audits.
Election Audits Should Be About More than Numbers
The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) notes that audits can “detect problems such as equipment tampering, ballot stuffing, and voting machine or counting errors.” One thing North Carolina does well is conduct voter history audits, which match the number of voters at each polling place or early voting site with the number of ballots cast. The SBE published a report of its audit of the 2024 election on November 26.
Nevertheless, having matching sets of numbers does not, in itself, prove that election laws and procedures were followed or that results were not altered through malice or incompetence.
A 2020 article in the Georgetown Law Technology Review highlighted the dangers of relying on audits that do not check procedures:
Absent affirmative evidence that the paper trail is a trustworthy record of voter intent—i.e., that tabulating it accurately would show who won according to the intent of every voter who legitimately cast a ballot (in the contests under audit) and no others—the audit might be likely to confirm the incorrect outcome or to change a correct outcome into an incorrect outcome.
What can be done?
The Georgetown report recommends producing “compliance audits,” which assess “the trustworthiness of the paper trail,” such as voter registration records and ballot chain-of-custody. Those audits are what the National Conference of State Legislatures calls “procedural audits,” and the term at least partially overlaps with what are commonly known as election “forensic audits.”
A Procedural Audit Uncovers Election Law Violations in Utah
Utah passed a law in 2023 requiring a biennial election audit in addition to the post-election audits already conducted by election officials. Utah’s new audit fits within the definition of a procedural audit since it “extends to the functions of all persons involved in the election process, including the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, each county clerk’s office, and each board of canvassers.”
Utah’s 2024 “performance audit” (yet another term for it) report came out on December 9. It uncovered three major problems with the state’s election system of the previous two years, including local election officials not properly executing post-election audits, a need to improve state oversight of local election officials, and insufficient ballot control and tracking.
The report concluded with 20 recommendations. They included procedural changes for county election officials and the office of the state’s chief elections official, the lieutenant governor. They also included having the Utah legislature amend state law to improve election integrity and streamline administration in light of the audit’s findings.
Part of the audit made a splash with its finding that “election officials in two southern Utah counties failed to comply with state law and put the integrity of multiple elections at risk in 2024.” While the audit did not find that the election violations had affected election results, it noted that “the failure in these counties to follow election law increases the risk of inaccurate or inappropriate election outcomes.”
North Carolina Should Include Procedural Audits in Its Election Reports
Even before Utah adopted its 2023 audit law, the John Locke Foundation was advocating procedural audits in North Carolina. As we noted in our review of the 2020 election, such an audit would include reporting on “chains of custody for all ballots and voting equipment, ensuring that only eligible citizens can vote, and [making sure] that observers and the public had meaningful access to every step of the election process.”
That Locke report also noted that election officials already collect much of the information needed for a procedural audit through the reconciliation forms they complete at the end of each day of voting.
There are several additional elements of Utah’s biennial procedural audit that North Carolina legislators should consider.
1. It covers procedures during a two-year period, not just for individual elections
This aspect would help identify systemic problems. In addition to finding problems in ballot handling in the 2024 primary and general elections, the Utah audit uncovered problems with voter roll list maintenance and state oversight of local election offices. It also recommended specific changes to election law and practice to address the problems it uncovered.
2. It was conducted by an outside entity
Utah’s Legislative Auditor General oversaw their procedural audit. Locke’s 2020 election review noted that there is an “inherent conflict of interest involved with election bodies auditing themselves” and recommended creating an independent election auditing body in North Carolina that could “be housed in another state government body, such as the Office of the State Auditor.”
Legislation passed last year will move the SBE to under the state auditor if it survives a lawsuit from Gov. Josh Stein. Such a move would make that office the natural location to house independent election auditors.
3. It includes responses from the state’s chief elections officer
Utah’s report includes point-by-point responses to the audit’s recommendations from the lieutenant governor (their chief elections officer), including areas of disagreement. That dialogue helps clarify which problems can be addressed by state and local election officials properly implementing current law, and which require changes to election law.
While the states are different, there is much in Utah’s example that North Carolina could use as a guidepost as it creates its procedural audit law.
