Adam Ambrogi at the Democracy Fund posts here about a post-election audit by the Philadelphia City Controller’s office.

I haven’t had the chance to read the report yet, but I gather that it’s not the sort of audit to check that election tallies accurately reflect the votes cast (which is itself a great idea).  Instead, it’s more like a forensic examination of an election process, to try to figure out (in this case) why so many provisional ballots were cast, and whether recurring factors lead to recurring problems, which can then be targeted for a fix.

I don’t know enough about the Philadelphia report to comment on the methodology one way or another, but I can’t recommend the instinct behind this sort of deep dive on the facts strongly enough.  There’s so much that we (still) don’t know about snarls in the election process, and it’s only through this sort of commitment to take a hard look at the process that will let local administrators best target their resources at making things smoother for everyone.