HARRISBURG, PA — Pennsylvania election officials on Friday began a statewide post-election audit of the May 19 primary, a review designed to verify the accuracy of the reported outcome in the Republican lieutenant governor race, the only contested statewide contest on the ballot.
The Department of State launched the risk-limiting audit, or RLA, by generating a random 20-digit number that will determine which ballot batches counties must manually review over the coming days. Ten department employees participated in the selection process by rolling 10-sided dice.
The audit is Pennsylvania’s eighth statewide risk-limiting audit and serves as an independent verification of election results through statistical sampling rather than a full recount.
County election officials will hand-count votes from randomly selected ballot batches and compare those totals with the original machine-tabulated results. The process is intended to determine whether the reported outcome would match the results of a full manual count.
Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said risk-limiting audits provide a scientific method for validating election outcomes.
“RLAs remain the highest standard of comprehensive election audits because the process provides a statistically sound, scientific method for confirming that the reported outcome of the election is accurate,” Schmidt said.
The review is separate from Pennsylvania’s legally required post-election audit, which requires counties to conduct a statistical recount of at least 2% of ballots cast, or 2,000 ballots, whichever number is smaller, after every primary and general election.
Under the state’s audit schedule, counties must complete the risk-limiting audit by Wednesday and certify their election results to the Department of State by June 8.
The Department of State livestreamed the random selection process, which officials said was intended to provide public transparency into election administration and post-election verification procedures.
Additional information about Pennsylvania’s risk-limiting audit process is available at vote.pa.gov/audits.
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