For the 2023 general election, the race for Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge was randomly selected for review. The results of the audited sample compared to the initial reported results confirmed that the outcome of the election was accurate.
To conduct this specific audit:
- Counties created ballot manifests, which are spreadsheets showing the number of ballots counted for the selected contest and details on how the ballots are organized and stored. This collection of information allows batches of ballots to be identified, retrieved, and examined if selected for the audit.
- After counties uploaded their ballot manifests to an open-source audit software tool called Arlo, Department of State staff generated a random 20-digit seed number during a livestreamed dice roll.
- That seed number was then entered into the audit software, which selected the random list of ballot batches for certain counties to retrieve. In total, 105 batches of ballots in 33 counties were randomly chosen to be audited.
- Officials in the selected counties retrieved the randomly selected batches of ballots and verified the ballots cast for the Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge race.
- The audit software system then tallied and analyzed the results.
The audit identified 24 discrepancies among the 201,715 total votes they reviewed, which is a margin of 0.01% -- or about one-100th of 1% of all ballots audited. Such discrepancies are typically the result of human error when manually tabulating audit results or stray and unclear marks on a ballot, which can lead to subjective decisions about a voter’s intent.
Download detailed results of the 2023 General Election risk-limiting audit: 2023 General Election RLA (xlsx)