Learning objectives
- Apply evidentiary standards from other fields to election materials
- Distinguish administrative recordkeeping from evidentiary chain of custody
- Evaluate whether a given custody record would survive an adversarial challenge
Content
- Borrowed discipline: how forensic laboratories, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and financial audit handle custody. All three faced the same problem earlier and solved it structurally.
- The four properties of an evidentiary custody record: completeness, contemporaneity, attribution, tamper-evidence. Most election custody records satisfy the first three and fail the fourth.
- Case study (30 min): a contested mail ballot batch. Participants work in pairs — one arguing the record is sufficient, one arguing it is not. Neither role is the "right" one.
- Debrief: the exercise reliably ends in stalemate. That stalemate is the lesson.
Assessment
"Identify one custody transfer in your jurisdiction that would not survive adversarial challenge, and describe what evidence would be needed to change that." ---