A mathematically hot-swappable audit station designed for conducting RLA's in Rhode Island.
Go to releases and download the latest version relevant to your platform.
Download the compressed file that starts with windows_. Unzip the file and double click
the Audit Station executable in the folder.
Download the compressed file that starts with mac. Unzip the file. Open
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/. In Terminal, type in cd and drag the folder into
the Terminal. Your terminal should look something like cd /Users/test_user/Downloads/mac_RI_special. Press enter. Type ./audit_station and press
enter.
Download the compressed file that starts with linux. Unzip the file and run the executable
audit_station. This is known to work on Fedora 28. If the executable doesn't work on your
distribution, then you may need to build from sources. See below for futher instructions.
This project is built using Python 3.
If you already have pip installed (Just try running pip from the command line), simply
run pip install -r requirements.txt.
If not, then you will have to install pip. You can either just install pip by itself,
but we recommend installing anaconda, which will sandbox your python installation so that
it won't interfere with anything else on your system.
Install anaconda for your respective operating system by following this. Once conda is installed, create a new conda environment that
uses python 3 and pyqt 5. For most systems, this is done by conda create --name riwave python=3 pyqt=5
After the environment has been properly set up, run source activate riwave to activate
the environment. You should see a (riwave) on the very left of your prompt.
Whether or not you installed anaconda or just pip by itself, run python __main__.py
in the WAVE folder to begin the audit station.
In this section, the use of the audit station will be described. This section will use the
example of RI special election, which can be used by running python __main_RI_Election.py.
When you first run the application, you will be greeted with a seed generation screen, as shown below:
Type in the random seed, which can be generated via dice or any other method of choosing, to generate the order in which ballots are audited. Then, press confirm and save. The main window will pop up, and the seed generation window can be safely closed.
Once you finish up on the seed generation, you will be greeted with the main audit station:
The audit station is split into 5 main parts, explained below.
The audit record table shows all of the ballots that have already been audited. Each ballot is its own row, and has four attributes to it:
- Audit # is an indexing of the ballot
- Actual Ballot # is what the ballot is labeled in real life. For example, if the actual ballot # was 49, then the ballot labeled as 49 would be picked up.
- Reported Value is what the machine (or CVR) interpretation of the ballot
- Actual Value is the human interpretation of the ballot
Here, the user can see the details of what they are auditing. As shown in the image, the contestants section has 2 sections:
- The internal indexing of each contestant. This is for the convenience of a 3rd party auditor who may want to look under the hood at the mathematical workings.
- The name of the contestant
Additionally, the auditor can see the reported results of the election, and verify that everything is how it is supposed to be:
This is the information for the current ballot. Here, the user can correct the information from a CVR and input the "correct" value for the ballot. The save button will update the information on the current ballot and recompute the audit. The save and continue button will do everything the save button does, and choose the next ballot to be audited.
Note: Any ballot that is clicked in the Audit Record will have its information reflected in the current ballot section.
Here, the user can see the current status of the audit. The value shown is the math that is
relevant to the audit, whether it is the T value in a Ballot Polling RLA or the number of
ballots left in a Comparison RLA. While the audit is running, there are three status codes
that reflect the state of the audit: Audit Complete, In Progress, or Full Recount Required.
Here, the user can configure the audit and change the different hyper parameters associated with the audit. If the user wants to mess with the current audit, they simply just adjust the values in the table and press recompute.
If the user wishes to change the audit, they can use the switcher to switch out audits. Then they press recompute. This will update the table of parameters so the user can tweak them to their desire. Once the parameters are set, the user just presses recompute once more to run the audit on the previously selected ballots.
Running the audit is simple. Simply press the Save and Continue button and correct the current ballot's actual value. The station will alert the user when the audit is finished.
If the user switches the audit, there is a chance that the number of audited ballots was too high for the new audit. For example, a Ballot Polling RLA might need 100 ballots, while a comparison RLA may only need 20. If this type of situation occurs, when the audit is recompute, the last ballot to be used in the computation will be highlighted to indicate where the audit had stopped, as shown below:
