01152019 - News Article - Dice roll kicks off first inquiry into Porter County's troubled 2018 general election

Dice roll kicks off first inquiry into Porter County's troubled 2018 general election
NWI Times
January 15, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/dice-roll-kicks-off-first-inquiry-into-porter-county-s/article_1d89c25a-0bfc-57ac-8106-114d6028ea06.html

VALPARAISO — The first official response to November's trouble-ridden general election was not as exciting as FBI agents carrying boxes of ballots out of the Porter County Administration Center, as some may have imagined.

It began Tuesday afternoon with 20 tosses of a 10-sided dice to come up with a 20-digit number that will be used next week to audit the 2018 election results.

The audit, which is expected to last two days, is only the second carried out in the state and the first usage after a pilot project in Marion County. It is being done by the Indiana Voting System Technical Oversight Program based at Ball State University on behalf of the Indiana secretary of state's office.

The secretary of state accepted an invitation from state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, to help Porter County investigate what went wrong with its election, address problems and restore voter confidence.

Porter County's 2018 general election tally was three days late as a result of numerous problems, including 12 polling places opening late, a shortage of poll workers and accusations of mishandled ballots.

The foul-up resulted in calls from officials for then-Porter County Clerk Karen Martin to resign as well as calls for investigations by the secretary of state's office, Indiana State Police and FBI.

Porter County Clerk Jessica Bailey said Tuesday that since taking office at the start of the year, she has heard from no one else interested in investigating the local election or election process.

"Will this be all of it?" she asked. "I'm not certain."

Audit open to the public
The audit, which will be carried out from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Jan. 24 and 25 in Room 102-A on the lower level of the county administration center in Valparaiso, will be open to the public, Bailey said.

The audit will use statistical approaches to review random ballots cast in last fall's races for county prosecutor, auditor, recorder and coroner, and a public question that was on the ballot, said Bryan Byers, co-director of the VSTOP program.

The 20-digit number created Tuesday by rolling the dice will be fed into the audit tool to kick off the random selection of ballots, said fellow VSTOP Director Jay Bagga.

The results of the random ballots chosen will then be fed into the audit tool until it decides it has received enough information to determine if last fall's vote count was correct, he said. If the results are not accurate, it could trigger a recount for the purpose of the audit only. Bagga could not recall a time when a recount was triggered.

The outcome of the audit will have no impact on the official results of the election, the VSTOP representatives said.

The recorder race had the narrowest margin of victory out of the races being audited and will thus require the largest number of random ballots read at 4,671, according to Mani Kilaru, an information technology specialist with VSTOP.

While the audit approach being undertaken in Porter County is new to Indiana, it is the norm in other states, Bagga said.