Bayesian Tabulation Audits: Explained and Extended

Understand

Tabulation audits for an election provide statistical evidence that a reported contest outcome is "correct" (meaning that the tabulation of votes was properly performed), or else the tabulation audit determines the correct outcome.

• Stark proposed risk-limiting tabulation audits for this purpose; such audits are effective and are beginning to be used in practice.
• We expand the study of election audits based on Bayesian methods, first introduced by Rivest and Shen in 2012.
• (The risk-limiting audits proposed by Stark are "frequentist" rather than Bayesian in character.) We first provide a simplified presentation of Bayesian tabulation audits.