Post Election Audits

Inyo County Elections will conduct a risk limiting audit and a manual 1% hand tally on June 21, 2022 starting at 9am at the Election Office. (update 6/22/22: the audit process continues until it is complete. The estimated completion date is 6/23/22)

Inyo County is committed to full transparency to uphold the integrity of elections. In Inyo County, all ballots are subject to a post-election audit in each election. These audits are conducted in public and open to observation.

1% Manual Hand Tally Audit Process

During the official canvass of every election in which a voting system is used, the official conducting the election shall conduct a public manual tally of the ballots tabulated by those devices cast in 1 percent of the precincts chosen at random by the elections official. If one percent of the precincts should be less than one whole precinct, the tally shall be conducted in one precinct chosen at random by the elections official.

In addition to the one percent count, the elections official shall, for each race not included in the initial group of precincts, count one additional precinct. The manual tally shall apply only to the race not previously counted.

Additional precincts for the manual tally may be selected at the discretion of the elections official. (CA Elections Code Sec. 15360)

Method of Selecting the Random Sample

To select the precincts, slips of paper in equal size with one slip per precinct are folded and placed in a wheel and shuffled. A random number is drawn from the wheel. If the percentage of votes from the random precinct is less than 2% of the total votes cast, a second precinct may be randomly drawn to increase the scope of the audit.

Procedure for the Manual Tally — Audit Board

After the precincts for the manual tally are selected, one or more boards of four people hand counts each contest using tally sheets.

Preparing for the Tally

Record the precinct number and date on the top of the tally sheet.
Count all ballots in stacks of ten and record the total hand count on the tally sheet.
Validate the total number of ballots to be audited is equal to the total casted votes on the Summary Report.

Counting the ballots

One board member reads the each measure/contest one at a time on each ballot and one board member observes to make sure the reader is calling the vote correctly. Pause between each item to allow the tally to be recorded.
Two board members mark their separate tally sheets as the measure/contest is called out. The marks are hash marks going in the same direction across the first row on the tally sheet. On the second row, the hash marks should go in the opposite direction of the hash marks on the first line (//// and then \\\\).
The board members who are marking the tally sheets call out the current tally count for each mark for each candidate or measure to ensure the counts between the two board members are synchronized .
When finished counting, the supervisor checks the manual tally against the results on the Summary Report. When the supervisor verifies that the tallies match, he/she initials the tally. The counters initial each page and sign on the final page.

Handling Discrepancies

Should a discrepancy between the manual tally and the machine count occur, the ballots should be manually recounted until two manual tallies match the machine tally.

If the machine tally cannot be reconciled with the hand count, and there is no reasonable explanation for the discrepancy, the Registrar of Voters will take additional steps as needed to confirm that the count is accurate. This may include recounting all ballots on another machine and performing a second audit of the new machine tallies.

Completing the Manual Tally

When the manual tally is completed, the Registrar of Voters confirms that the machine count and the manual tally results match and that discrepancies have been resolved.

The ballots and results of the manual tally are then placed into containers, sealed and kept for the required amount of time for that election.

Risk-Limiting Audit (RLA) Process

The risk-limiting audit (RLA) 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.

In California, when a risk-limiting audit is used, it must confirm that the election results reported by the voting system are 95% likely to be accurate. Unlike the post-election 1% manual tally traditionally used to confirm election results in California, under a risk-limiting audit every ballot cast in the election—regardless of which precinct it was cast in—has an equal chance of being audited.

The Inyo County Elections office uses a combination of permanent full-time staff, along with citizen volunteers, to conduct all audits. The audit board locates, retrieves, or observes the location and retrieval of each randomly selected ballot from the appropriate storage container and the audit board verifies the seals on the appropriate storage containers. No less than two audit board members and one observer are present with the ballots during the process to ensure the security, confidentiality, chain of custody and integrity of ballots. Audit board members take oaths to follow all laws and procedures to support the audit.

For the RLA portion of the audit, a random seed was generated by rolling 10-sided dice, which is then used to determine which ballots would be selected for the audit. The audit board examines each randomly selected ballot and interoperates the voter markings. After each voter intent determination was made, the audit board enters the information into the software tool supplied by the California Secretary of State. The audit continues until the risk limit is met.

Voter intent is determined by unanimous agreement of the entire audit board and if the audit board cannot agree on intent, the elections official will arbitrate the issue following the guidelines outlined in California Code of Regulations 20123, et. seq.

All parts of the process are open to public observation. Observers, are asked to follow all public health & safety guidelines

California Statewide Direct Primary Election – June 7, 2022

Inyo County Elections conducted a risk limiting audit on seven contests contained wholly within Inyo County, and a 1% manual hand tally on the remainder contests. The audits were held on June 21, 2022 starting at 9am at the Election Office, and continue until complete ending on June 23, 2022. The Audits were processed with per the above-posted instructions. Audit result results and backup are posted in links below. All parts of the process were open to public observation. The RLA was completed on June 21 at 1:48 pm in one round, with zero discrepancies. The 1% Manual Hand Tally started on June 21, and ended on June 23. One discrepancy occurred during the manual adjudication process; one ballot that required human evaluation to determine the intention of the voter was decided upon by the members of the Adjudication Board differently than the members of the Audit Board. All results of the audit confirmed no errors occurred in the scanning tabulators or the system tallied/reported votes.

Resources and combined Audit reports:

Risk Limiting Audit reports:

Random Drawn Precinct: 110 (306 ballots)
Contests not included in 110, requiring a second draw: Supervisor District 1.
Second Draw for District 1 Precinct: 102 (784 ballots)
Contests that were subject to the RLA:
- Governor
- Lieutenant Governor
- Secretary Of State
- Controller
- Treasurer
- Attorney General
- Insurance Commissioner
- Board of Equalization 1st District
- United States Senator- Full Term
- United States Senator- Partial / Unexpired
- Us Representative in Congress 3rd District
- State Senator 4th District
- State Assembly 8th District
- State Superintendent of Public Instruction
- County Superintendent of Schools
- Supervisor 1st District
- Supervisor 3rd District
- Sheriff
1% Manual Hand Tally Sheets

Risk Limiting Audit reports:

Election Name: California Direct Primary Election. June 2022
Audit Type: Ballot Comparison
Risk Limit: 5%
Seed: 96656996100312758074
Audit Board Data Entry: Online
Contests that were subject to the RLA:
- Assessor
- Auditor
- Coroner
- County Clerk-Recorder
- District Attorney
- Public Administrator
- Treasurer-Tax Collector
Results Log
Ballot Manifest

California Gubernatorial Recall Election – September 14, 2021

Inyo County conducted a 1% Manual Tally Audit per CA Elections Code § 336.5.

1% Manual Hand Tally Report

2020 Risk Limiting & 1% Manual Hand Tally Audit

Inyo County conducted a risk limiting audit of seven contests contained wholly within Inyo County, and a manual 1% hand tally on the remainder contests.

All required data was published on this website prior to commencement of the audit, beginning with the random seed and select of the random 1% hand tally precincts at 8:30 am on November 24, 2020 at the Independence Courthouse located at 168 N. Edwards St. Independence, CA 93526, immediately followed by the retrieval of ballots and the audit itself.

All parts of the process were open to public observation. Observers, were asked to follow all public health & safety guidelines and maintain at least 6 foot distance from others. A projector was used so that the ballots are clearly visible to all present.

Risk Limiting Audit:

The RLA was completed on November 24 at 4:30 pm in one round, with zero discrepancies.

Resources:

Full audit report

Ballot Manifest

Semi-Final 9th Results Report

Chain of Custody Logs

Ballot Contest/Ballot Style key

Ballot Type/Voting Precinct/Regular Precinct key

Cast Vote Records Hash:

http://arlo-e2e-denver-demo.s3-website.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/inyo2020/
% shasum -b -a 256 MANIFEST.json
b4c1ecf91d35f01042e7164ba426a28edd026fe1bb23f7747c6a688425843a7d *MANIFEST.json

Seed:

01685534362931444020

Contests that were subject to the RLA:

Governing Board Member Big Pine Unified School

Governing Board Member Lone Pine Unified School

County Supervisor, 4th District

Bishop City Treasurer

Big Pine Fire Protection District

Director, Zone 1 Northern Inyo Healthcare District

Measure P – The Bishop Community Safety And Essential Services Measure

Contests that were audited with a traditional 1% hand tally of the precincts:

Semi-Official Results – 9th Report, with results by precinct

Randomly selected precincts

Precincts randomly selected for the 1% hand tally are posted below.

President and Vice President – 112

U.S. Representative 8th District – 112

Member of the Assembly 26th District – 112

Governing Board Member Bishop Unified School – 112

Lone Pine Fire Protection District -117

Bishop City Council -106

Propositions 14 – 25 – 112

Resources:

California Secretary of State Risk Limiting Audit Emergency Regulations

Chain of Custody Procedures