Running the Audit Yourself

To run the audit yourself, you need the BASH Unix shell. If you're running Unix/Linux/Mac OS X, you've got basically everything you need out of the box. If you're running Windows, you'll probably need to install cygwin (Sorry, I don't use Windows, so I haven't tested this.)

You will also need subversion and git in your PATH. Why both? Because the Scantegrity team uses subversion, and I use git.

There are two scripts attached below:
  1. the script to download all the data you need
  2. the script to run the verification
Only the first script needs network access. Given the size of the files, you'll need to schedule a few minutes of fairly high-bandwidth access.

So, here goes for the step-by-step.

Make sure you have the right software

You need Python 2.5 or higher and PyCrypto.

Best way to install PyCrypto is:

easy_install PyCrypto

as root.

Download the Takoma Park 2009 Audit Runner


It's here.

Create your workspace


tar xzvf takomapark2009.tar.gz
cd takomapark2009

You should see two shell scripts in that directory, one for downloading the complete data and verification code, and one for running the actual audit itself.

Run the downloader


./download-takoma-park-audit-data.sh


You should see two directories now created: verifcode and data.
This part should take about 20-30 minutes on a reasonable Internet connection.
Run the verification


./run-takoma-park-audit.sh


You should see a new directory names result, and many files within it. You can check each stage for each ward, and you can check the confirmation codes at every step against this site's signed records and, if you were a voter, against your ballot verification codes.

This part should take about 1 hour on a reasonably powered machine.