Secretary of state examines Post-Election Audit Standards.

CalCPA member Amy Lehmkuhl, CPA, has been appointed by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to serve on the newly created Post-Election Audit Standards Working Group, which is charged with examining whether the post-election audit standards in California should be strengthened.

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Others appointed with Lehmkuhl, a director of tax and accounting at Sacramento-based Ueltzen & Company, LLP, include experts in the fields of computer science, financial auditing, statistical analysis, election reform advocacy, and city and county government: David Jefferson (chair), Center for Applied Scientific Computing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Kim Alexander, president and founder, California Voter Foundation; Elaine Ginnold, Registrar of Voters, Marin County; Kathleen Midstokke, City Clerk, city of Downey; and Philip Stark, professor of statistics, University of California, Berkeley.

The group will report to the secretary of state the options for developing and implementing additional auditing requirements that could enhance the reliability of election results, as well as suggested guidelines and procedures for reconciling manual audit and machine count results.