Mauro Audits Himself
The Democratic candidate for Secretary of State has run a good many elections as Polk County auditor. He has developed one good habit that election protection activists want everyone to adopt: he audits his own ballot counting machines.
He has already begun work on his audit of the June 6 primary, he said Saturday at the Democrat’s state convention.
His practice is to wait until the official work is all done and the time for demanding recounts is past. During that time no one touches a thing. Only when it is clear that he can do no harm by running an in-house investigation. . . .only then does he say, “Let’s see how accurate our scanners were.” He selects a precinct at random and looks at the ballots the old fashioned way–with his eyes. He did not say if he makes any public announcement of his findings.
All counties do pre-election testing of their machines for accuracy. But Pottawattamie showed that such tests are often inadequate.
This sort of auditing is what auditors ought to do in every county. It is one of the goals of voting machine critics. It would be required by federal legislation that now has 191 co–sponsors.
Mauro already does it. Good for him. Is it done in any other county?