A Sarbanes-Oxley Act for Elections

SOX: how many governments would pass?

Those who had some connection to the accounting function of a public company---from the lowliest billing clerk to the CFO and CEO--during the early 2000's, found it to be a very tough slog.

The scandals of Enron and WorldCom defrauded investors of $billions, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 to prevent a repeat of these occurrences.

SOX required companies to diagram in great detail their entire accounting system (e.g., billing and collections, payroll and personnel, accounts payable, inventory, etc. etc.), identify weak points, and list management's means of correcting mistakes and preventing fraud at hundreds of these weak points.

The accounting function, which was understaffed because it was often regarded as a necessary evil--certainly less important than sales, marketing, production, and engineering--was highly stressed because of the Sarbanes-Oxley work on top of its regular responsibilities.

But the benefits of doing that work were substantial: many weaknesses were discovered--often the concentration of tasks in one person--and controls, supervision, and money were added to beef up areas that could significantly harm the organization. Also, with the benefit of experience, some of the burdensome requirements that did little to reduce risk have been lifted .

The private sector still has financial scandals, of course, and we can't know how many of these scandals SOX has prevented. But now that the price to put in SOX has been paid, trust in financial reporting has largely been restored.

The same can't be said for the public's trust in election results. After the Presidential election of 2000, there was universal shock at the abysmal state of the country's election apparatus. What was clearly needed was a Sarbanes-Oxley Act for government systems, especially for elections.

But because no such requirement was imposed in the intervening years, the weaknesses of election systems--and their lack of controls--have not been corrected; in fact they have been exacerbated by the increasing ways that false or changed ballots can be added to the count. The deficiences are glaringly obvious to reasonable people, regardless of whether their side won or lost.

Repairing our elections so that fraud will be prevented, or if discovered can be quickly corrected, won't be easy given the principle and fact of local government autonomy.

We could start by publishing recommended-but-not-mandated "best practices" for elections and form a Federal election-systems audit team that would examine State and local voting systems and make recommendations to officials. These examinations will be resented, of course, as were SOX auditors (I didn't like them either), because they will always find weaknesses in the way things are done.

There will be technical obstacles unique to elections---for example the dual priority of identifying legal voters and keeping the ballot secret--but are solvable using blockchain and similar technologies.

We sometimes forget that one of the foundational principles of democracy is that the losers accept the result because they trust the process. That trust is near tatters, but it can be restored by demonstrating to everyone, clearly and transparently, that cheating can't turn an election.