Colorado Secretary of State’s Office Begins Risk-Limiting Post-Election Audit of Colorado’s 2019 Coordinated Election

Denver, November 15, 2019 – Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold convened a public meeting today to establish the random number for the 2019 Coordinated Election risk-limiting audit (RLA). Colorado is the only state in the country to require statewide RLAs following most elections conducted by county clerk and recorders. RLAs provide a high statistical level of confidence that the outcome of an election is correct and reflects the will of the voters.

“Voter-verified paper ballots combined with a risk-limiting post-election audit help verify our election outcomes and instill voters with confidence that our elections are secure and run with integrity,” said Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “We are proud that Colorado is the safest state to cast a ballot, and the risk-limiting audit is a critical piece of this equation.”  

The Secretary of State randomly selected from a hat the names of twenty attendees. Each randomly selected attendee rolled a 10-sided die, establishing one digit of a 20-digit random number. The Secretary of State’s voting systems team then entered the random number into the pseudo-random number generator incorporated in the Secretary of State’s open-source RLA software. This process results in a selection of individual ballots for each county to examine and audit that is both truly random, thus ensuring the integrity and statistical validity of the audit. Counties are beginning this process this afternoon.

The random number established at today’s RLA public meeting has been published on the Audit Center of the Secretary of State’s website and is as follows:

On Friday, November 8^th, Secretary Griswold selected the statewide and countywide target contests for the 2019 Coordinated Election RLA in accordance with Election Rule 25.2.2(1). The complete list of target contests is also available on the Audit Center.