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Expert John Drozd tells committee forensic post‑election audits are needed, criticizes risk‑limited audits
Summary
John Drozd, an independent scientist, testified that meaningful post‑election forensic audits are essential for election integrity and argued that risk‑limited audits (RLAs) are insufficient. Committee chair signaled interest in exploring more thorough audits.
John Drozd, a physicist who said he led a team of volunteer experts who analyzed 2020 election data, told the House Committee on Election Integrity that meaningful post‑election forensic audits are essential to establish highly accurate election results and that risk‑limited audits (RLAs) are insufficient by themselves.
Drozd described three categories of election inaccuracies—voter, machine and process—and said partial forensic work in 2020 uncovered problems in each category in different states. He cited a post‑election review in Nevada that his presentation characterized as identifying about 1,500 votes recorded for people listed as deceased, 4,000 votes by noncitizens, 8,000 votes from nonexistent addresses, 15,000 votes from commercial or vacant addresses, 19,000 people recorded as voting who did not live in Nevada, and about 42,000 apparent instances of multiple voting. He said his team identified “over 130,000 unique instances” in Nevada and that the findings have not been refuted, as he described it.
Drozd also discussed a court‑ordered review of Dominion Voting Systems equipment in a Michigan county, saying the investigator was allowed only eight hours to examine 22 Dominion machines and associated equipment and that the resulting report identified discrepancies across different reported tallies and criticized the adjudication process. He said RLAs, by contrast, “are only barely scratching the surface” because they check whether machine tallies match paper tallies, are limited to jurisdictions that use paper ballots, assume adequate chain of custody, and do not verify voter legitimacy.
Chairperson Smith, a former clerk who said she is familiar with Michigan’s auditing practices, thanked Drozd and said she agreed that RLAs alone are not enough and that the committee would “be looking into doing more thorough post‑election audits, as you mentioned in this presentation.”
During questions, Representative Fox asked whether the 2020 election was certifiable; Drozd said he was not an expert on Michigan specifically and that certifiability depends on the standard used. Representative Wooden challenged some of the Nevada findings, saying portions of that analysis “have been debunked” and noting court rulings and academic critiques cited in the record. Drozd replied that he believes independent, nonpolitical third‑party reviews are needed.
Drozd concluded by urging the committee to consider the recommendations in his reports (hosted at election‑integrity.info), including a list of 30 actions his materials recommend states and the federal government take to improve audits and election integrity.
No formal committee action was taken on the testimony; the transcript records a commitment from the chair to explore more thorough post‑election audits but no directive or vote to implement specific audit changes.
