Verification Board Duty to Check Math Process Overview

Who Checks the Election Results?

When election day is over, the ballots are all tallied, absentee and provisional ballots are processed, and the results are ready to be made official — who checks the math? Who reconciles the quantity of ballots and reviews the work of the clerk and the election judges?

States will have laws and regulations around this topic. In Missouri, it is the Verification Board in each county that has the duty of final review of election materials, and that Board certifies the final results for the county.

Understanding the Verification Board

This video provides basics about verification boards. These boards verifies the work the election judges and clerk, leading to the election results which they are presenting to be certified.

A new clerk did not understand the process for validating provisional ballots, and blanket-approved all provisionals — even one submitted in a blank envelope (no voter information)
An entire polling place was missing from the county’s election results — this was missed by the clerk and election judges, and discovered during the Verification Board review
A Verification Board discovered a discrepancy of 53 ballots reported as cast versus the number counted — the error was the test deck from pre-election testing was never cleared from the voting machine