Noting contests not present on the Ballot Interpretation entry page

[nealmcb]

One form of malfunction or attack on an election involves votes in contests on a ballot that just don't show up in the associated CVR.

If the audit board sees a contest on the ballot that the tool doesn’t display (because it is not in the CVR), the tool should allow them to indicate this. Currently this kind of problem could simply be noted as text under "Comments" for one of the existing contests, but having a checkbox for "contest not found", or an overall comments form for the whole ballot card might be clearer and easier to track. The recommended procedure should be documented.

[nealmcb]

The best option at the present, which should be documented, seems to be to simply mark the ballot as being not found. That is the only current way to indicate a discrepancy for the missing contest, and given the severity of the situation, it is probably appropriate to mark a discrepancy for all the contests. See #686 and in particular e5df042

[kiniry]

For the moment we can only give a recommendation in documentation. This should be a vanishingly rare case, and if it is not, then it is certainly indicative of a problem that will require much more than an RLA.

[nealmcb]

Here is a variant on this issue: if all the contests are displayed to the audit board in their entry form, but they notice a candidate is missing from a contest.

Note that there are three types of candidates in a Dominion system: Regular, QualifiedWriteIn, andWriteIn. Normally, it appears that a CSV-format CVR file contains a marker column titled Write-In in-between the columns for Regular candidates (to the left) and QualifiedWriteIn candidates (to the right). Other write-in entries are not listed in the CVR.

So the candidate in question could be any of these types.

In this "missing candidate" choice case, the audit board can point this out under "Comments" for the contest in question. If the candidate in question actually received a vote, the audit board should probably signal that something is very very wrong by hitting "ballot not found" also.

[sfsinger19103]

Note added to County Run Book: "If one or more contests on the ballot card are not present on the Ballot Card Verification, click the "Ballot Not Found" button."

[kiniry]

So do we believe that this issue is closed, by virtue of the new line of documentation?

[nealmcb]

The current documentation approach will get the right results if all CVRs that the tool works with include all the contests. For complicated anonymity-preservation reasons, it may be decided that some contests should be redacted off the CVRs prior to upload. E.g. for a school district which only has a few voters in a given county, any indication that that contest appears on the ballot may be a red flag in terms of how that voter voted. We'll have more insight into how to handle that in the future, with more data on how often such things happen and how the counties and state want to deal with them.

Having more specific ways to report the various more complicated forms of discrepancy, like this, probably make sense in the future for other reasons.

But for now, the documentation is probably sufficient.

[sfsinger19103]

Before closing this issue, let's revise the County Runbook as follows @mkiniry 👍 [edited to incorporate comments from @nealmcb below]

replace the sentence: If a ballot card is not found click the “Ballot Card Not Found” button. with: If a ballot card is not found, or if the list of contests on the Ballot Card Verification Screen doesn't match the list you see on the paper ballot card, click the “Ballot Card Not Found” button. The Ballot Card Verification Screen for the next ballot will be displayed.

Also replace:

If one or more contests on the ballot card are not present on the Ballot Card Verification, click the “Ballot Not Found” button. with If the list of contests on the Ballot Card Verification Screen doesn't match the list you see on the paper ballot card, click the “Ballot Not Found” button. The Ballot Card Verification Screen for the next ballot will be displayed.

[nealmcb]

Thanks, I like those additions. I'd also put the word screen after Ballot Card Verification

The case you raise of contests not on the CVR should indeed be included. It might make sense to handle the two cases together, to avoid people having to track which one is missing from where. I.e. "If the list of contests on the Ballot Card Verification screen doesn't match the list you see on the paper ballot card...".