# Cast Vote Record A **cast vote record (CVR)** is the voting system's own electronic record of the selections on a single ballot — one row per ballot, with the choices it contained. It is produced by the tabulator as it counts, and it is the artifact that makes the most efficient form of audit possible. Its significance is narrow and load-bearing. A **ballot-comparison** [[Risk-Limiting Audit]] works by matching each randomly drawn paper ballot against the system's record of *that specific ballot*, which requires the system to keep per-ballot records and to make them retrievable in a known order. Without a CVR export, a state is limited to batch-comparison or ballot-polling, both of which need larger samples for the same confidence. [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] is where that constraint shows up as a design column: Colorado audits individual ballots statewide because every county's equipment can export cast vote records. The CVR is also a disclosure fight. Because the file contains the contents of individual ballots, releasing it raises a ballot-secrecy problem in small precincts where the set of voters is narrow enough to make a row attributable — and because it is the most granular machine record that exists, it has been the object of repeated public-records demands from the [[Election Denialism]] movement since 2020. ## The format Each vendor has exported CVRs in its own layout, which made cross-system audits and research hard. In November 2019 the [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]] published a common data format, **NIST SP 1500-103**, in XML and JSON versions. Its data model can tie each CVR to the ballot image it came from. A CVR is not a ballot image. The image is a picture of the paper; the CVR is the machine's reading of the marks on it. On-screen [[Ballot Adjudication]] works from the image; a ballot-comparison audit checks the CVR against the paper itself. ## The 2022 request wave At his "Moment of Truth Summit" in Springfield, Missouri, on August 20–21, 2022, [[Mike Lindell]] urged supporters to request their counties' cast vote records. Form-letter requests followed across the country. San Diego County received 64 in August 2022, about twenty times its usual monthly total. Missouri's secretary of state told counties on August 30 to keep all 2020 records "until we have clarity on what is public or closed records by the court." The Greene County, Missouri clerk then sued to get a ruling on whether CVRs must be released, citing voter privacy. ## The courts on disclosure | State | Case and date | Result | |---|---|---| | Pennsylvania | Lycoming County request for 2020 CVRs, first filed October 2021 · Commonwealth Court, March 4, 2024 (5–2) | CVRs are "the electronic, modern-day equivalent" of ballot-box contents and are exempt from the Right-to-Know Law. The county judge had ordered them released. | | Arizona | *Hudson v. Heap*, 1 CA-CV 25-0730 · Court of Appeals, affirmed August 11, 2026 | CVRs are protected "electronic data from ballots" under A.R.S. § 16-625, even after certification. Earlier voluntary releases did not waive that protection. A petition for review to the Arizona Supreme Court was filed September 11, 2026. | Practice still varies by jurisdiction: some offices post CVRs online, some release them on request and some refuse. The ballot-secrecy problem is concentrated in small precincts, where an unusual combination of choices can point to one voter. The Arizona respondent is the Maricopa County Recorder, [[Justin Heap]]. ## See Also - [[Risk-Limiting Audit]] — the method whose most efficient variant depends on this record - [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] — where the CVR appears as an audit-unit constraint - [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] — the count that produces it - [[Election Ballot Chain of Custody Flow]] — the paper the CVR is matched against - [[Election Management System]] · [[Ballot Marking Device]] · [[Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail]] - [[Election Denialism]] — the movement whose records demands made the CVR a public object - [[Mike Lindell]] · [[Justin Heap]] · [[Optical Scan Voting System]] · [[Ballot Adjudication]] · [[Chain of Custody]]