Definitions

• Sheets -- Each ballot image comprises a single paper sheet, including both sides. This is the case even if multiple sheets are included in the logical ballot. Individual ballot sheets will include a number of contests. NOTE: Depending on the number of sheets included in a single logical ballot, the number of ballots cast may be less than the total number of sheets, and it may be hard to predict because subsequent sheets are commonly not included in the logical ballot cast. Counting the first sheet will usually produce a pretty accurate number, but even then, some voters do not include the first sheet either.

• Contest or Ballot-Contest -- A single contest on a single ballot is a "ballot-contest" and sometimes just "contest" in this context. This is not the entire contest with all votes from all ballots summed, but simply the evaluation of that single contest on that sheet. Frequently, these can be called "votes", except that sometimes a single contest will allow multiple votes.

• Write-in -- If the write-in oval is marked or if the write-in area is filled in, then it is considered that the voter intent is to write-in the name for some other candidate.
  How this is handled is specific to different states, but most often, the written-in name must also be from a list of qualified write-in candidates.
  Write-ins on BMD ballots do not need human-eye adjudication at this stage because the names are keyed in.
  The name written-in should be examined in close contests even if there were no candidates that were qualified for this contest, because the name written-in may be of a listed candidate, and if so, then the vote is accepted for that listed candidate.
  Write-ins normally account for about 80% of Contest Variants. At this stage, most jurisdictions do not fully filter whether the name written-in is a qualified write-in candidate, but may do so during adjudication.

• Overvotes -- One overvote occurs when more than the "vote-for" number are selected. Overvotes do not happen on BMD ballots. Very frequently, overvotes are misinterpreted by the voting system and should be fully reviewed in close contests. If a contests has an overvote, it will be first classified as an overvote, even when the write-in target is selected. Some election departments will mark overvotes as an undervote when they are confirmed as an overvote. AuditEngine understands this form of adjudication and does not regard it as a disagreement.
  
  AuditEngine will correctly interpret many marks that would be considered undervotes by voting systems, such as when ovals are circled or if a checkmark does not actually get inside the oval.

• Adjudicated -- For some voting systems, such as Dominion, the CVR may provide not only the original evaluation of the ballot sheet, but also a 'modified' record which includes all contests on the ballot. The 'modified' record may modify zero or many contests after human-eye review by election staff. If the modified record does not show a change in a given contest, it is not possible to know from that record if the contest was inspected and confirmed or not.
  
  AuditEngine also provides for adjudication of its evaluation using the AdjudiTally App. The results of the adjudication will be included in the analysis of the results. Any official hand counts can also be included in the comparison results.

• Disagreed -- a contest is considered "disagreed" unless the voting system and AuditEngine fully agree on the outcome, including whether it was overvoted, undervoted, or had write-ins. Since write-ins and overvotes are frequently reviewed and adjudicated by election staff, disagreed write-ins and overvotes are treated together in terms of analysis. "Normal Disagreed" are the rest of the disagreed, which are not write-ins or overvotes.

• Non-Variant Sheets -- A ballot sheet is classified as Non-Variant if it has no write-ins, overvotes, and gray-flags, and if compared, every contest fully agrees between the evaluation of the voting system and AuditEngine. Such sheets are maintained as a single record but keep track of the number and which contests are on them.

• Variant Removed Sheets -- If a ballot sheet has at least one contest-variant detected, then that contest variant is logically pulled from this comparison record, and what remains are the rest of the non-variant contests. Note that if all contests are considered contest-variants, then it will be an empty shell with no contests left in it, and all contest variants will be moved to the contest-variants set.

• Contest Variants -- A contest variant is a ballot-contest which has write-ins, overvotes, is gray-flagged, or if it is 'disagreed', i.e. if there is any disagreement between the evaluation of the vote by AuditEngine and the official result (if a comparison is performed). Undervotes are not included in the set unless they are disagreed. Contest Variants can normally be summed by contest. Each contest variant has a separate record for each ballot-contest instance.

• Unprocessed -- Unprocessed sheets are those that were NOT successfully processed by AuditEngine. These are generally due to images that are damaged due to 'stretching' of the image when the sheet is not evenly fed through the scanner, barcodes that were corrupted and unreliable, or BMD ballots that were not perfectly read using OCR. Cleaning the scanner rollers can help to avoid corrupted images. AuditEngine does not track contests on unprocessed sheets.

• Ballot Variant -- If a complete sheet is blank or if the image was detected as corrupted, then this is classified as a ballot-variant.

• Images Missing -- Sometimes we can't access all the images and so these are accounted for as images missing. AuditEngine does not attempt to sum the contests on ballot images that are missing.

• Total: Total ballots cast which included this contest with images that were processed by AuditEngine.

• NonVariant: Instances of this contest without write-ins, overvotes, and were not flagged as 'gray', and if compared, where the official outcome and the evaluation by AuditEngine agreed.

• Undervotes: Undervotes are very numerous and are not included in the discrepancy report unless they are disagreed or gray flagged.

• Gray Only: Instances of this contest where AuditEngine detected an ambiguous mark or used heuristics to decide voter-intent. This column omits any ballots which are already in the columns for write-ins, overvotes, or disagreed ballots, even if AuditEngine internally flags them as gray.

• All Variants: Ballots with Overvotes, Write-ins, Gray Flagged, or if compared, are disagreed. The number of ballot sheets cast should equal the sum of "Non-Variant", and "All Variants". The components of this column are highlighted.

• Disagreed% of Margin This provides a good measure of whether the variants may have any impact on the outcome, and the highest 5 values are highlighted. Further analysis is still required to see if the disagreements will reduce the current margin of victory.

• Variant% of Margin This provides a maximum measure of whether the variants may have any impact on the outcome, and the highest 5 values are highlighted, and any contest with variant% over 10%. Typically, the vast majority (perhaps 90%) of All Variants are Agreed Write-ins and Agreed Overvotes which may only rarely result in any changes in the outcome.

• Vote Margin: This is the margin of victory, i.e. gap between votes for runner-up and winner (lowest winner if contest has multiple winners) among the ballots processed, and may be a subset of the total margin for the entire district if AuditEngine did not receive or process all ballot images.

To reduce the report size, precinct details are limited to the first few contests or those contests that were highlighted or are included in the setting 'cmpcvr_report_include_contests'. If you are interested in a specific contest, include it in the setting 'cmpcvr_report_include_contests', which is a list.