Reply #19: certification of election

[garybeck]

this has always been confusing to me

as the brennan center recommends, the certification of the election should be contingent on the results of the audit:

9. BINDING ON OFFICIAL RESULTS: Post-election audits must be
completed prior to finalizing official election results and must either
verify the outcome or, through a 100% recount, correct the outcome.

so how do you accomplish this? what is meant by "official" results anyway? Is it the canvass report? in my state, the canvass report sure looks like the official results. you can look at one here:

http://vermont-elections.org/elections1/2006GECanvass1113.pdf

this was done before the audit.

then I look on the "elections calendar" for that year and there is no mention of when the "official" results are announced, so I'm left to think the canvass report is more or less the "official" results.

so it becomes difficult to comply with that recommendation, unless you simply conduct the audit very quickly after the election, even on election night and ensure that the results of the audit are known before anythin "official" is announced. So if they find a discrepancy, they are prevented from putting out any kind of official report that shows numbers that could have a problem.

Maybe if the canvass report had a disclaimer at the bottom stating "these results are unofficial pending confirmation by the audit."