Mandatory election audits are a critical step for restoring public confidence in the electoral system and for learning what problems exist (in equipment, systems, and personnel) so that they might be effectively corrected. Unfortunately, the promise of auditing will be severely undermined if the federal auditing entity lacks independence from the election administrative authority. Secretaries of State can play a number of crucial additional roles that will facilitate efficient and effective election audits, but because of the appearance of conflicts of interest should not be supervising and conducting federal audits. The federal audit effort will be greatly enhanced if the legislation will require each audit report to answer the above four key questions.