New voting audits offer trust and transparency in elections

Gay Ferguson, right, speaks with election official Carter Blaisdell prior to voting at the First Baptist Church of Black Mountain polling place on March 3, 2020, in Buncombe County. Colby Rabon/Carolina Public Press

State to pilot risk-limiting audit, a process of sampling ballots from across voting methods, to provide more transparency and confidence in results.

By Jordan Wilkie, Carolina Public Press, August 9, 2021—This fall, North Carolina will pilot a new kind of postelection audit, the gold-standard method to ensure the candidate declared the winner in a race actually received the most votes. The action is the first step in a likely yearslong process of improving the state’s postelection audit strategies. 

Currently, the state uses a “sample audit,” whereby election officials hand-recount two random precincts to make sure the results are right. 

For most elections, North Carolina’s sample audits count far more ballots than is necessary to be confident that the election results are accurate, creating a significant and unnecessary burden on election officials. For very close elections, the state’s current sample audit may recount too few ballots to be highly confident in checking the results.  Continue reading…