Audit Trail

In general, records from which the events and/or votes cast in an election may be reconstructed. Audit trails are of two distinct types which are often confused with one another. The first (definition 1) is a record of administra tive events that take place during an election. The second (definition 2) is a r ecord of the actual ballots cast by voters in the election. The former is used to identify irregularities in admi nistrative procedures; the latter is used in the event of a recount. 1. Any "documentation of changes made to vo ting system programming, the incident report, and the report generated by an electronic vo ting system on election day." Minn. Rules §8220.0250.1a. A "record of the manual and computing processes which have been applied to an election, showing each stage of processi ng and allowing the original data to be reconstituted. It permits verification of the integrity and reliability of the vote tabulating process as well as detection and correction of problems. A combination of manual and computer- generated documentation provides a record of each step taken in: • defining and producing ballots and generating related software for specific elections; • installing ballots and software; • testing system readiness;