HB 3270: Oregon to Implement Placebo Election Audits

As the Oregon Legislature was working diligently to wrap up its 2007 session in late June, 2007, the Senate passed HB 3270 over the strong objection of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition. The bill was then signed into law by Governor Kulongoski.

HB 3270 employs an "audit of precincts" method to hand count the ballots processed by a small percentage of optical scan machines after an election. Oregon's Director of Elections, John Lindback, sponsored this approach under the supervision of Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, after Lindback had been given carte blanche authority by the bill's original sponsor, Rep. Mitch Greenlick, to rewrite the bill.

Oregon VRC supported that original version of the bill, which provided a statistically designed "sample of ballots" method, and advocated for its passage in an "In My Opinion" published in the Oregonian. After the bill had been turned over to Director Lindback Oregon VRC continued to advocate for a "sample of ballots" approach and provided the House rules committee a new version of the bill.

Here is the comparison of the two methods we provided to the Senate Rules Committee. (Also, see below for an "At a Glance" fact sheet on the two methods.) We also provided a fiscal summary demonstrating the lower cost of the sample of ballots method compared to the audit of precincts method.

The version of HB 3270 that actually passed was the result of a last minute "gut and stuff" effort by Director of Elections, John Lindback, who favored the "audit of precincts" method loosely based on the federal "Holt" bill then under consideration in Congress

After the last minute change, our rushed efforts to stop the bill included a press release and an urgent memo to Legislators in both the House and Senate. We also gave testimony to the Senate Rules Committee (Senator Kate Brown, Chair) and lobbied members of the Senate to amend the bill. Neverthless, the bill passed with the "audit of precincts" method without the changes needed to make this an effective law.

Therefore, Oregon now has an election audit law that does nothing more than spot check a small percentage of machines and which gives a roughly 60% level of confidence that the outcome wouldn't change if a hand count were conducted. Given the marginal benefits of such a poorly designed audit, the mandate of HB 3270 now looms as a waste of time and resources for future elections.

We as Oregonians must make clear to our election officials and our next Secretary of State that this audit is not acceptable for Oregon. Unfortunately, vote counting is conducted by secret software in our State. We must therefore have a verification by a statistically designed sample hand-count in order to provide confidence in the outcomes. Otherwise, citizens can have no basis for confidence that the votes are counted accurately.