SANTA ANA, CA - June 8, 2022 – The Orange County Registrar of Voters will commence the first of several post-election tests and audits on Thursday, June 9, 2022, to ensure the accuracy of the 2022 Statewide Direct Primary Election results.

The votes on a portion of paper ballots cast in this election will be hand-counted to audit the accuracy of the vote tally from the County’s voting system scanners and software.

The Registrar of Voters will use two methods of randomly selecting ballots to audit. The first random selection of one percent of the precincts in the County will be held at 11 a.m. on Thursday at the Registrar of Voters, 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, Santa Ana. The ballots from the selected precincts will then be prepared for hand counting, which should start by Friday, June 17.

Members of the public may observe the random selection process and the hand counting of the selected ballots.

The Registrar of Voters will also conduct a risk-limiting audit, which will begin at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 10 with the establishment of random 20-digit number for use with the audit software to randomly select ballots to manually count.

The risk-limiting audit is not required under California law and is being conducted in addition to the required one percent manual tally of precincts.

Each digit of the random seed number will be selected in order by sequential rolls of a 10-sided die. The Registrar of Voters will randomly select members of the public who attend the audit process to take turns rolling the die and designate one or more staff members to take turns rolling the die if no members of the public are present. The randomly selected ballots will then be prepared for manual counting, which should also start by Friday, June 17.

The risk-limiting audit serves as an additional measure of election integrity that verifies the outcome of the election results are accurate. To learn more about the risk limiting audit visit ocvote.gov/rla. 

Finally, post-election logic and accuracy testing of Orange County's voting system equipment and software will begin on Friday, June 17, and will continue until all ballot scanning devices used in the election have processed about 400 test ballots to confirm the votes on them are accurately counted. 

A pre-election logic and accuracy test is required by law to be performed prior to each election, which was completed successfully from May 6 through May 17. A post-election test is not required, but is performed by the Registrar of Voters to provide an additional level of confidence in the integrity of the Primary Election.

Quote by Registrar of Voters Bob Page

"The Registrar of Voters team is committed to ensuring all elections in Orange County are fair and accurate. We go beyond what is required in statute and conduct additional audits and testing to ensure every piece of our voting system is secure and recording votes as voters intended. These three audits and tests are key components of our comprehensive election integrity program.”

WHAT / WHEN: 

One percent manual tally (as required by California law), Thursday, June 9, 2022 - 11:00 a.m. (a subset of ballots, representing one percent of precincts chosen at random, will be manually tallied and compared to the software-counted votes to verify they match).

Random seed for risk-limiting audit selected by the rolling of 10-sided die, Friday, June 10, 2022 – 11:00 a.m. (after the random seed is established the physical pulling of the actual ballots will take place and the ballot comparison audit will begin).

Post-election logic and accuracy test, Friday, June 17, 2022 – 11:00 a.m.

WHERE:

Registrar of Voters, 1300 South Grand Avenue, Building C, Santa Ana, CA

All testing and audits are open to the public.