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California Statutes § 15367 Risk-limiting audit

⤴ Up to Article 5.5: Risk-limiting Audits Pilot Program

Statute Text

(a)
(1) Commencing with the statewide general election held on November 3, 2020, the elections official conducting an election may conduct a risk-limiting audit during the official canvass of any election in accordance with the requirements of this article.
(2) Participating counties shall conduct a risk-limiting audit on one or more contests fully contained within the county's borders. A participating county may exclude any contest that has been subject to a risk-limiting audit from the one-percent manual tally required by Section 15360.
(3) Commencement of the audit and selection of ballots for the audit shall not occur before the reporting of the results to which the contests are being audited. The Secretary of State shall define in regulations how all ballots, including provisional ballots and vote by mail ballots whose status has not yet been resolved, shall be taken into account in the audit to ensure that if a full manual tally of the votes on all validly cast ballots would show an electoral outcome that differs from the reported outcome, there is at most a five percent chance that the audit will not require such a tally.
(4) An elections official is in compliance with this section if the elections official conducts a ballot-level comparison audit, or ballot polling audit, with a five percent risk limit or a risk-limiting audit with a five percent risk limit using another method for conducting risk-limiting audits as approved by the Secretary of State.
(b)
(1) The Secretary of State, in consultation with recognized statistical experts, election verification and integrity stakeholders, voting system manufacturers, and local elections officials, shall adopt regulations to implement and administer this article.
(2) The regulations shall do all of the following:
(A) Require elections officials to establish appropriate audit boards and procedures to conduct the risk-limiting audits.
(B) Establish criteria for public education on risk-limiting audits.
(C) Establish procedures to ensure the security of the ballots, the selection of ballots to be inspected during each audit, and the rules governing cast vote records and other data involved in risk-limiting audits.
(D) Establish the calculations and other methods to be used in the audit to determine whether or when the audit of any contest is required to include the examination of more ballots, and to establish calculations and methods to be used in such an escalation, and to determine whether and when the audit of each contest is complete.
(E) Establish procedures and requirements for testing and disclosing the algorithms and source code of any software used by the Secretary of State for the selection of ballots to be included when elections officials conduct risk-limiting audits under this article.
(F) Establish requirements for the content of the risk-limiting audit report required by subdivision (d).
(G) Establish procedures and requirements to ensure the audit process is observable and verifiable by the public, including disclosing the methods used to select samples and to calculate the risk, providing public opportunity to verify that the correct ballots were inspected during the audit, and providing public opportunity to observe the inspection of the voters' marks on the ballots during the audit.
(c) The risk-limiting audit shall be a public and observable process, with the elections official providing at least a five-day public notice of the time and place of both the risk-limiting audit and the selection of the ballots to be used when conducting the risk-limiting audit.
(d) The elections official conducting the risk-limiting audit shall publish a report on the results of the risk-limiting audit in the certification of the official canvass of the vote.

History

Amended by Stats 2020 ch 33 ( AB 2400 ) , s 3 , eff. 8/27/2020 .

Added by Stats 2018 ch 913 ( AB 2125 ) , s 2 , eff. 1/1/2019 .

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