CPAs want to improve election control systems.

CPAs Aim to Restore Voter Confidence with Election Security Techniques

A group of certified public accountants (CPAs) are advocating for the application of accounting techniques to assure integrity in elections and restore voter confidence. Retired Marine Reserve Colonel Frank Ryan, a CPA and former state representative in the Pennsylvania House, left his seat to work on election security, believing he could have a bigger impact on public policy outside the legislature.

More Than Math

While many think of CPAs as arithmetic wizards who handle taxes, Art Werner of the Philadelphia firm Werner-Rocca Seminars, who trains CPAs, says they do more than math. The CPA code of ethics and the work they do make CPAs the perfect profession to add oversight to elections. They set up systems to avoid fraud and can forensically determine if there’s been fraud or mismanagement.

• CPAs design systems that can guarantee impartiality and proper results
• CPAs can design internal controls to redeem trust in elections
• Adding CPA systems to elections in every state would increase much-needed trust

According to Werner, adding CPA systems to elections in every state would increase much-needed trust. “Even if every state right now has a system that is working, if the people of the United States have a suspicion that there’s a problem, it lends to the fact that people will then walk away and say that we have an unfair election,” Werner said. “Maybe the CPA, by their involvement, can establish a system that will say, we have set up something that guarantees that it’s fair. Even if it turns out the results are the same, people will trust it.”

Inaccurate Voter Records

The Pennsylvania Auditor General’s damning 2019 performance audit of the Statewide Uniform Registry Electors (SURE) system, which is administered by the Department of State, caught Ryan’s attention when it came out. The audit identified tens of thousands of potential duplicate and inaccurate voter records, as well as voter records for nearly three thousand potentially deceased voters that had not been removed from SURE. Ryan said he was shocked by the report, written by a Democrat Auditor General, Eugene DePasquale, to a Democrat-led administration.

After the 2020 election, when a voter deficit report was released, Ryan called up several CPA firms to do a forensic audit. However, every CPA firm he approached refused, citing political charge and potential loss of customers.

Adding CPA systems to elections in every state would increase much-needed trust, and the involvement of CPAs could establish a system that guarantees fairness and impartiality.

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