ElectionAudits

Preview release

Written for ElectionAudits by Neal McBurnett on 2008-10-02

A preview release of the software is now up on launchpad.net. Here is the initial README file.

-------------------------------

The ElectionAudits software project is designed to help audit
elections with good statistical confidence. It is provided in support
of the

Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Audits
http://electionaudits.org/principles

Authors
=======
Neal McBurnett

ElectionAudits is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

See the file COPYING for the full license.

Requirements
============

Python (developed with python version 2.5, but should work with 2.3)
python-lxml (xml parsing package)
Django 1.0 # makeauditunits.py could be separated out from this pretty easily
sqlite3

Helpful but optional Django apps:
lukeplant_me_uk.django.validator for automatic xhtml validation
django_extensions for ease in development and documentation

It has been tested on Ubuntu Linux, but shouldn't be hard to get
running on OSX or Windows.

Versions, Bug reports
=====================
The software uses launchpad.net for project support. Visit

https://launchpad.net/electionaudits

to get the latest version or report bugs. It uses the "Bazaar"
distributed version control software, making it easy for you to
contribute.

Components:
===========

makeauditunits.py
=================
A program to parse election results data into easily
manipulated databases and clean csv files.

Currently supported: Hart InterCivic Tally "cumulative" reports in xml
(crystal-reports) format (including all options: Absentee, Early and
Election day, and the info box).

Use the --help option to print usage instructions:

$ ./makeauditunits --help

Test data is provided, so you can just run

$ cd audittools
$ ./manage.py syncdb
$ ../makeauditunits.py ../testdata/testcum.xml

or if you have some incremental reports:

$ makeauditunits -s cumulative-pe-s23-b005-m800.xml cumulative-pe-s24-b006-m803.xml cumulative-pe-s25-b007-m804.xml

electionaudit module
====================

Graphical exploration and entry of information, via a
Django-based web site.

Usage:

First run the internal django server:

$ cd audittools
$ ./manage.py syncdb

$ ./manage.py runserver

Then, in a browser, visit the main URL, e.g.

http://127.0.0.1:8000/

to see the Audit Reports for the various Contests, etc.

See doc/model_graph.png for a diagram of the various database tables
and associated fields and relationships.

See http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/ (using the username and password
you entered during the "syncdb" step) to enter new data, and
http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/doc/ for more documentation on the data models
and various available views of the information.

Features: self-validation of all xhtml pages generated: see
a report of any errors at

http://127.0.0.1:8000/validator/

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