On election night, the public watches vote totals roll in on the news. What most voters never see is the careful work that comes after, when election officials confirm that every ballot was counted exactly as the voter intended.
After each election, the Leon County Elections Office runs every voted ballot through a second, independent tabulator. The results from that retabulation audit are compared against the original count, contest by contest. In our 2022 primary and general elections, the two systems matched at a rate above 99.99%.
That fact should build confidence in elections, but, for too long, much of that work happened out of public view. Voters were asked to trust a process they could not easily examine for themselves.
Achieving better transparency in our auditing processes is why I have been working to put our retabulation audits online for the world to see since 2015. But major hurdles had to be overcome, such as protecting voter privacy, managing large datasets and image files, and designing an interface anyone can navigate and understand with ease.
That is why our office partnered with the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University to create the Post-Election Audit Dashboards, now live at VoterData.lci.fsu.edu.
The dashboards give voters direct access to the evidence behind the results. Users can compare totals by contest and review data by precinct, voting method, and contest. They can see where small differences appear and better understand why. They can even review images of individual ballots with voter privacy protected.
Making those images public requires great care and impressive programming skills. Ballot images carry information that could identify voters, including precinct codes, party designations, timing marks, and even a voter’s handwriting. With protecting privacy as a top priority, the research team at the LeRoy Collins Institute built technology that uses machine learning to detect handwriting on ballots and redact anything that could reveal who cast them.
Ballots become visible, while voters stay private.
The dashboards also make government work better. My office regularly receives requests for election data, each one requiring staff to compile and deliver information individually. Now, we can direct the public to a single, comprehensive source.
Voters get faster, more direct answers, while my staff saves valuable time.
A survey experiment conducted by the LeRoy Collins Institute found that Florida voters who viewed the dashboard reported increased confidence that ballots in Leon County’s 2024 election were counted correctly. This improvement in voter confidence was even greater than improvements from reading a standard PDF audit report from their own county. The data makes clear that when voters can see and interact with the evidence, trust grows.
Leon County served as the pilot for this project, working alongside FSU programmers and researchers to overcome the many technical difficulties. The framework was built to be adaptable, and the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Office has since joined the effort to refine and expand it.
I have spent more than 30 years working in elections. One of the greatest challenges in this field has always been closing the gap between what election officials know and what voters can see. Post-election audits already confirm that our systems work, but the dashboards let voters verify that for themselves.
I invite you to explore our website and watch our post-election audit video at LeonVotes.gov/Your-Elections-Office/Election-Integrity, and take a deep dive into the Post-Election Audit Dashboards at VoterData.lci.fsu.edu. The proof is public, the tools are ready, and the case for putting this kind of information in public view gets stronger with every election.
Mark S. Earley is the Leon County Supervisor of Elections. He has worked in election administration for more than 30 years and served as president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections association.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Post-election audits work. Leon County voters can see them | Opinion
Reporting by Mark S. Earley, Your Turn / Tallahassee Democrat
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