Doing More With Less: Mismatch-Based Risk-Limiting Audits

Alexander Ek (), Michelle Blom, Philip Stark, Peter Stuckey, Vanessa Teague and Damjan Vukcevic ()

No 4/25, Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics

Abstract: One approach to risk-limiting audits (RLAs) compares randomly selected cast vote records (CVRs) to votes read by human auditors from the corresponding ballot cards. Historically, such methods reduce audit sample sizes by considering how each sampled CVR differs from the corresponding true vote, not merely whether they differ. Here we investigate the latter approach, auditing by testing whether the total number of mismatches in the full set of CVRs exceeds the minimum number of CVR errors required for the reported outcome to be wrong (the "CVR margin"). This strategy makes it possible to audit more social choice functions and simplifies RLAs conceptually, which makes it easier to explain than some other RLA approaches. The cost is larger sample sizes. "Mismatch-based RLAs" only require a lower bound on the CVR margin, which for some social choice functions is easier to calculate than the effect of particular errors.

Keywords: single transferable vote; risk-limiting audit; margin of victory; mismatch-based audit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2025
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