SANTA ANA, CA - September 16, 2021 - Orange County will conduct several post-election tests and audits beginning Wednesday, September 22, 2021.

Post-election logic and accuracy testing of Orange County's voting system will commence on Wednesday, September 22, 2021, and will continue until all devices have been included in the test. A pre-election logic and accuracy test is required by law to be performed prior to each election, which was completed, but a post-election test is not required. This extensive system test, conducted on every piece of voting equipment, records test votes that must be fully tallied and compare with machine totals.

In addition, Orange County will conduct a risk-limiting audit beginning Wednesday, September 22, 2021. The risk-limiting audit, which will be conducted as a ballot comparison audit, is not required under California law and is being conducted in addition to the one percent manual tally of precincts.

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

Quote by Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley

"It is my priority to 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.” He continued, “This additional scrutiny 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.”

Prior to the commencement of the risk-limiting audit the Registrar of Voters will establish the random seed for use with the audit software’s random number generator.

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. 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.

Establishing the seed in this manner results in a properly random, and verifiable, selection of individual ballots for examination and audit, and ensures the integrity and statistical validity of the risk-limiting audit.

The Registrar of Voters will publish the election results to be audited, along with a cryptographic hash of their contents, prior to the seed ceremony, and will publish the seed on its website immediately after it is established.

WHAT / WHEN: 

One percent manual tally (as required by California law), Wednesday, September 22, 2021 - 9:00 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, Wednesday, September 22, 2021 – 10:00 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, Wednesday, September 22, 2021 – 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.