Thread by @jennycohn1

Rs made gains in state legislatures in 2020. Even where manual audits are conducted, they rarely include state races. 😢

“Ds spent big to take control of state legislatures but lost their key targets. Now they’ll be on the sidelines as new maps are drawn” politico.com/news/2020/11/0…

I reported on the sorry state of election auditing laws in the US in this pre-election piece for @NYRDaily. This must change. #RobustManualAuditsNOW
1/ nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/…

2/ “Earlier this year, ... Republicans blocked federal legislation, the SAFE Act, which would have required such [manual] audits for most federal races.”

3/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at...UCB, told me a few weeks ago that “only a few jurisdictions currently audit elections in a way that has a good chance of catching and correcting wrong reported outcomes.” @philipbstark

4/ “That requires a trustworthy paper trail—primarily hand-marked paper ballots kept demonstrably secure throughout the election and the audit—and [what is known as] a risk-limiting audit using that paper trail.” #HandMarkedPaperBallots

5/ “But, to the best of my knowledge, even those states only audit a few contests in each election.”

6/ “A report by the National Conference of State Legislators confirms that just three states (Colorado, Rhode Island, and Virginia) require risk-limiting audits for one or more races.”

7/ Screenshot from my @nybooks piece

8/ Correction post 1: @nybooks, not @NYRDaily