New Jersey

Status of Audit Legislation: 
Signed into law 2008, however, because New Jersey votes on paperless DREs no audit can be conducted as their is no independent paper record to audit.
Link to Text of Legislation: 
New Jersey's law (Title 19, Section 19:61-9, "Audits of election results")
Notes: 

State Summary

 

All of the information below pertains to audit legislation that passed in 2008. However, these statutes were dependent on simultaneous implementation of new voting systems that produced voter-verifiable paper records. Such machines were initially scheduled to be in place by January of 2009, but later legislation halted the purchase of new voting systems until funding for such systems could be guaranteed. See Section 19:48-1, “Voting machines, requirements,” Subsections b (1) and b (2): http://law.onecle.com/new-jersey/19-elections/48-1.html.

 

Given this delay, no audit can currently be conducted in New Jersey, as the current voting system consists only of paperless DRE machines that produce no auditable record.

 

All citations below, except where noted, are from the New Jersey Statutes, Title 19, Section 19:61-9, “Audits of election results”: http://law.onecle.com/new-jersey/19-elections/61-9.html.

Sampling Method: 

Any procedure designed, adopted, and implemented by the audit team shall be implemented to ensure with at least 99% statistical power that for each federal, gubernatorial or other Statewide election held in the State, a 100% manualrecount of the voter-verifiable paper records would not alter the electoral outcome reported by the audit. For each election held for State office, other than Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and for county and municipal elections held in 100 or more election districts, any procedure designed, adopted, and implemented by the audit team shall be implemented to ensure with at least 90% statistical power that a 100% manual recount of the voter-verifiable paper records would not alter the electoral outcome reported by the audit. Such procedures designed, adopted, and implemented by the audit team to achieve statistical power shall be based upon scientifically reasonable assumptions, with respect to each audited election, including but not limited to: the possibility that within any election district up to 20% of the total votes cast may have been counted for a candidate or ballot position other than the one intended by the voters; and that the number of votes cast per election district will vary. Such procedures and assumptions shall be published prior to any given election, and the public shall have the opportunity to comment thereon.

Trigger: 

If the audit reveals that a candidate’s share of votes cast has been altered by more than 1/10 of 1 percent, the Audit Team will expand the audit to the same number of election districts included in the initial audit. If the initial audit pool comprises more than ½ of all election districts included in the race, all remaining precincts will undergo an audit. The Audit Team has the right to expand the audit even further if they feel necessary after the second round of audits

Oversight: 
The State Attorney General will appoint an “independent professional audit team”, that includes at least one member that has verifiable expertise in statistics, and at least one member with verifiable expertise in auditing. This team oversees the audit process.
Who Conducts the Audit?: 
Local Election Officials
Location of Random Selection: 
The Attorney General will conduct the random selection at a public meeting.
Types of Voting Machines in Use: 
DREs without printers For more detailed information, see Verified Voting's website: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?&topic_string=5std&year=2008&state=New%20Jersey
Races that are Audited: 
Federal or State office,including the offices of Governor and member of the Legislature, and for county and municipal offices selected by the Attorney General.
Voting Units that are Audited: 
Districts
Timeline for Audit: 

Districts must be selected no later than 24 hours after the election, and audit must be completed before certification.

Completed Before Certification?: 

Yes

Absentees, Provisionals and Early Voting: 
Any ballots that are submitted at locations other than at the election district on election day, and are counted by optical scan machines (such as votes cast by military service voters and overseas federal election voters) must be separated and bundled in groups called “audit units.” Each audit unit shall contain approximately the average number of ballots cast in the precincts within the county. Each audit unit will be assigned a unique identifying number, and will be included in the random selection process.
Do the results of the audit become the official tally?: 
Yes
Is the Audit Publicly Observable?: 
Yes
Additional Resources: 
New Jersey Code - Title 19 - Elections
New Jersey Division of Elections
New Jersey Audit Info from CEI