Jefferson County Clerk David Yates speaking to reporters Tuesday at their office on East Liberty Street.(Roberto Roldan / LPM )The Jefferson County Clerk is looking for an outside consultant to audit its voter data after an LPM News investigation found discrepancies that impacted residents' ballots .The Clerk’s office posted a request for proposals Monday afternoon. It’s searching for a company that can “perform an independent audit of voter address and jurisdiction assignments.” The request also asks applicants to develop an automated system for validating that voters have been assigned to the right precincts.An LPM News analysis published earlier this year found roughly 1,800 households who may have been assigned to the wrong voter precincts. A subsequent state audit found the error affected about 2,100 voters in Louisville. In some cases, this prevented residents from voting in their Metro Council and the state House races.In a statement to LPM News, Clerk David Yates said the third-party audit will “raise the bar for an additional layer of transparency, accountability, and public confidence.”“The goal is to eliminate mapping errors that occurred under previous administrations,” Yates said. “We also want to validate Jefferson County's voter registration and precinct assignment processes, identify any opportunities for improvement, and reinforce trust that every voter is assigned to the correct precinct, and that every election is administered with the highest level of accuracy and integrity.”Yates said he thinks his office has the opportunity to set a new best practice for clerks in Kentucky.According to the RFP, the consultant will use a new statewide map created by the Kentucky Board of Elections as a reference point for ensuring all Louisville’s voter precinct assignments are correct. The company or group will also be expected to provide a method for repeating these audits in future election cycles.All work will need to be completed within 30 days of the award, according to the RFP. The Clerk’s office has promised the third-party audit will be completed in time for the November General Election.The RFP stresses that the future auditing process should be as automated as possible, requiring “minimal manual intervention.”At a press conference last month, Yates said the voter precinct misassignments discovered by LPM were the result of human error.He explained that Jefferson County’s political boundaries were redrawn in 2022, following the previous U.S. Census. Under the current system, any changes to the precinct assignments are manually entered into the system.“This is like a glorified Excel sheet and there’s no way of catching it,” Yates said during the July 1 press conference. “If somebody makes an error in [2022], until someone brings it to your attention, you don't know, unless you go house-by-house to audit.”Yates, as well as the Kentucky County Clerks Association, called on state officials to provide the funding necessary to automate these changes in hopes of eliminating or minimizing the opportunities for human error.The Jefferson County Clerk’s office is accepting proposals from outside consultants through Aug. 14.The proposals will be evaluated based on their technical approach, the consultants' experience with similar projects, their overall qualifications and the stated cost. The criteria are weighted, with the technical approach and experience with similar projects being the highest priorities.The RFP does not include a maximum cost.Yates sent a letter to Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg in June, outlining the issues with voter precinct misassignments and his plans to conduct an audit. He told LPM News at the time that the letter put Metro Government on notice that the Clerk’s Office may need additional funding.The Clerk’s office says its ultimate goal with the request is to find a partner that can deliver “a repeatable, transparent, and defensible data validation process that strengthens public confidence in the accuracy of voter data” and gives their staff the ability to conduct similar audits in the future. ...read more read less