Glossary
Observability
What outsiders can reconstruct about an election from public records. High observability: anyone can verify. Low observability: you have to trust someone.
This site treats observability as a measurable property of the system. Example gap: the state does not record how many ballots are returned by third parties, so that activity cannot be reconstructed from any public record.
Where this term appears
- Returner deadlines arrive — with an observability tradeoffTimeline step
- AB 306 (2018) — Returner deadlines and voter protection from returner paperwork failuresLaw
- The steady late drift toward the more progressive candidate is a known Los Angeles pattern…Claim
- Geography split the field: Pratt's map looked like Caruso's 2022 map — and Caruso, too…Claim
- The public gets telemetry on what's left to countTimeline step
- Published studies find that mail voting itself gives neither party a meaningful advantage.Claim
- Prosecuted election-fraud cases in California are rare in absolute terms — a few dozen…Claim
- Nobody actually measures how many ballots third parties return in California — which means…Claim
- The mandatory rule gets enforced at scaleTimeline step