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Risk-limiting Audits

Learn about Risk-Limiting Audits, a post-election procedure using statistical methods to ensure electoral outcomes, as Snohomish County pilots this audit to enhance election integrity and the public's trust. Find out about the goals, process, lessons learned, and next steps in conducting these audits.

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Risk-limiting Audits

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  1. Risk-limiting Audits • A tool for building trust

  2. Introductions • Miriam Campbell, OSOS VIS Manager • Garth Fell, Snohomish County Elections Manager • Jennifer Morrell, Consultant for Democracy Fund

  3. Breakout Session Plan • Risk Limiting Audit Exercise • What is a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) • Snohomish County Pilot • Next Steps • Resources

  4. Risk Limiting Audit Exercise

  5. Risk-limiting Audit A risk-limiting audit is • a post-election procedure • that uses statistical methods and tools • to audit the elections process and • provides a known chance of identifying and correcting wrong electoral outcomes.

  6. Snohomish County RLA Pilot

  7. Pilot Goals • To follow the procedural steps required for a risk-limiting audit as outlined in state statute, administrative code and best practice • To determine the time requirements and constraints of a risk-limiting audit as currently outlined in state statute and administrative code • To understand the staff, equipment, facility, and supply resources required to conduct a risk-limiting audit

  8. Pilot Goals (cont.) • To understand the impacts of conducting a risk-limiting audit on the continuing needs of the election • To better understand the benefits of a risk-limiting audits

  9. Pre-pilot day activity • Outlined the steps required in statute / WAC • Held a series of conference calls with the OSOS and Jennifer Morrell • Identified how we would maintain and create a ballot manifest • Developed tools and documents to aid in pulling ballots

  10. Ballot manifest • Comprehensive of all valid ballots • Independent of the tabulation system • Contains information that will allow you to efficiently find specific ballots

  11. Documents to aid in pulling ballots • Ensures the correct ballot to audit is pulled • Serves as a placeholder in the original storage box

  12. Pilot day

  13. Random seed

  14. Generate a list of ballots to audit

  15. Pull the ballots

  16. Enter ballot markings

  17. Generate reports

  18. Lessons Learned and Outstanding Questions • Consistent, documented ballot handling and storage practices are critical • Maintenance of a ballot manifest • Storage of boxes/batches matches your ballot manifest • Post-scan imprint of the image number very helpful • Contemplate impacts on other types of audits or recounts

  19. Lessons Learned and Outstanding Questions • An uncertain time and resource commitment • Number of ballots to pull and hand count is based on the risk-limit, number of ballots returned, and closeness of target race. • Opportunistic audits add time. • The audit process is designed to expand your audit if there are discrepancies, potentially conducting a full hand count.

  20. Lessons Learned and Outstanding Questions • RLA tool improvements • Requires that ballots and markings be input in a particular order • Unnecessary key strokes • Online nature of the tool needs to be considered from a security/privacy standpoint

  21. Lessons Learned and Outstanding Questions • How do talk to the public about risk-limiting audits? • The “large chance” vs. perfect

  22. Next Steps • RLA Tool • Rulemaking • Notification • Training • Cybersecurity Team (SOC) • Promoting voter confidence

  23. Questions

  24. Resources • A Gentle Introduction to Risk-limiting Audits – Mark Lindeman and Philip B. Stark (https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/gentle12.pdf) • Tools for Comparison Risk-Limiting Election Audits (https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Vote/auditTools.htm) • Knowing It’s Right, Parts One and Two– Jennifer Morrell, Democracy Fund, May 2019 (https://www.democracyfund.org/publications/knowing-its-right)

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