Orange County Election Audit Shows Integrity Of Election Process

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Amid election counts across the country, the Orange County Registrar of Voters is not shying away from an audit of their election ballot-count process.

On Friday, Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley will oversee a risk-limiting ballot comparison audit. Though it isn't required under California law, Kelley decided to conduct in addition to the one percent manual tally of precincts.

The audit will begin at 9 a.m. when a random seed is selected at the Registrar of Voters, 1300 South Grand Avenue, Building C, Santa Ana.

"The risk-limiting audit is a procedure that provides strong statistical evidence that the election outcome is correct, or has a high probability of correcting an outcome that wouldn't match a full hand count of the ballots," Kelley's office said in a prepared statement.

The audit itself requires human beings to examine and verify more ballots in close contests and fewer votes in contests with wider margins.

The process is random, the control number determined by a randomly selected outsider of the Registrar's office rolling a 10-sided die. The purpose is one of maintaining integrity, something that Kelley is bound to uphold.

The risk-limiting audit "provides an important check on the integrity of the election process," Kelley said. "This is a valuable opportunity to utilize the enhanced auditing capability of Orange County's voting system, while at the same time ensuring that the outcomes are true and correct."

How The Audit Works:
The Registrar will establish a "random seed" for use with the audit software's random number generator before beginning the risk-limiting audit, he says.

The seed is a number consisting of at least 20 digits, and each digit will be selected in order by sequential rolls of a 10-sided die.

Can the public watch?
Yes. The Registrar of Voters will randomly select attendees on hand to view the audit process, who will take turns rolling the dice. One or more staff members will take turns rolling the dice if no one else is present.

This ensures that the seed number is random, maintaining the "integrity and statistical validity of the risk-limiting audit," Kelley said.

Once the random seed is established, the actual ballots' physical pulling will take place and the ballot comparison audit will begin.

The Registrar of Voters will first publish the original election results from the selected ballots online, followed by the results of those same hand-tallied votes after the audit is complete. It is not known how long that process will take, however Patch will monitor the count on Friday.