Report showcases how risk-limiting audits work and how Orange County utilized them during the 2018 elections.
SANTA ANA, CA - The Registrar of Voters today announced the release of its report on two recently conducted pilot risk-limiting post-election audits. Orange County conducted these pilot audits in order to demonstrate that risk-limiting audits can be conducted on older voting systems.
Although currently not required under state law, a risk-limiting audit is a robust method of manually auditing election results to provide statistical confidence in the outcomes. This method provides a higher statistical confidence level of the reported election results than traditional manual count methods and is, therefore, becoming more prolific and desirable for election officials to implement.
The risk-limiting audit provides the ability to determine, with a predefined risk level, if it can correct an erroneous outcome. Audits currently conducted under state law (a 1% manual tally of contests) provides confidence that the voting system is working properly but does not provide the ability to correct an erroneous outcome.
AB 2125 was passed in September 2018 to allow county election officials to conduct a risk-limiting audit in place of the 1% manual tally commencing with the March 3, 2020 Statewide Primary Election. Orange County will employ risk-limiting audits in 2020 as the primary method of auditing results.
Quote by Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley:
"The Registrar of Voters is pleased to share its data on pre-audit procedures, audit processes and procedures, and observations made during the pilot program to provide best practices to other county elections officials considering implementing risk-limiting audits and interested members of the public".
Access Full Report Here: