Take Action: Ensure Verification of Election Results Uploads

This is a common-sense best practice that is already in place in many jurisdictions, but unfortunately it is not carried out everywhere. 

Nevertheless, it is a critical verification step because individual machine tallies are transferred in digital (not human-readable) form onto computers that aggregate those totals. If the digital tallies are not accurately uploaded, it would not be apparent without consistently checking the poll tapes. 

At the close of voting, polling place voting machines tally all the votes cast on that machine. The totals may be transferred to an Election Management System at the county election headquarters by loading the tallies onto a USB drive which is brought to the county election office with the poll tapes, or by wireless modem transmission. (In the case of wireless modem transmission, the USB drive is typically also physically brought to the county election office along with the poll tapes.) The results are then uploaded into the Election Management System, which aggregates the results for the county. 

In both cases, the individual machine results are transferred directly in digital form. This means that if the uploaded tally – either from the USB drive or wireless modem – populates incorrectly in the Election Management System, it would not be clear that the tally is incorrect, unless it’s checked against the poll tape.

(Importantly, in jurisdictions that conduct post-election audits by selecting certain machines, hand-counting all the ballots counted by that machine, then comparing the hand count against the poll tapes, the audits would not catch this type of error. That is why this simple step is so important).

This is not supposition; these sorts of errors have occurred in multiple instances wherein the voting machines tallies uploaded inaccurately, causing the Election Management System to aggregate and report incorrect election results. For example, this occurred most notably in Antrim County, Michigan in 2020. 

In each of these cases the error would have been immediately caught and corrected if election workers had routinely checked the uploaded tallies against the poll tapes. And in most of these cases the results were so far off the election officials noticed something was wrong immediately, and the results were amended quickly. But less pronounced vote errors could go unnoticed without this important verification step in place. In fact, in the independent analysis commissioned by the Michigan Secretary of State into the Antrim County election error, the final report recommended the Secretary provide guidance to all Michigan election jurisdictions to adopt procedures to check the poll tapes. Regrettably, we have no evidence this was done. 

That’s why we are launching this campaign. We recognize that many states do have sound and responsible policies in place to direct jurisdictions to check the poll tapes. And even in states that lack this guidance, many local officials have wisely adopted this best practice. But this isn’t good enough – we need every election office across the country to take steps to ensure that voting machine totals are checked against the poll tapes. 

This does not replace the need for comprehensive risk-limiting post-election audits. But it will help limit the chances vote totals could be incorrectly counted. Please join us in calling on all election officials to pledge to ensure this common-sense best practice is universally implemented. 

Thank you. 

Election administration best practices dictate that all voting machine tallies should be verified against the voting machine poll tape. We call on all state and election officials to take steps to help protect our elections by adopting this best practice.