Resources

This page contains links to various community resources and public documentation about risk-limiting audits.

These projects represent considerable work done by the election verification community, and we salute the contributors’ time and effort!

If you see something we’ve missed, please let us know in the forum.

Best Practices & Implementation Guides

• Democracy Fund’s “Knowing It’s Right Part 1: A Practical Guide to Risk-Limiting Audits”
• Democracy Fund’s “Knowing It’s Right Part 2: Risk-Limiting Audit Implementation Workbook”
• Brennan Center’s “Post-election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections”
• The Election Assistance Commission’s “Risk-Limiting Audits - Practical Application”
• Garland et al.’s “Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Tabulation Audits”
• Lindeman & Stark’s “A Gentle Introduction to Risk-limiting Audits”
• The National Academies’ “Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy”

Shorter Reads

• Mark Lindeman’s “What’s an RLA? What Does a Good One Look Like, and Why Would I Care?” from the OSET blog

Documentation from Pilot RLAs

• California’s Post-Election Risk-Limiting Audit Pilot Program documentation (2011-2013)
• Orange County, California’s Pilot Audit report (June, 2018)
• Fairfax City, Virginia’s Pilot Audit report (August, 2018)
• Porter County, Indiana’s Pilot Audit report (January, 2019)
• Rhode Island’s Pilot Audit report (forthcoming)
• Michigan’s Pilot Audit report (forthcoming)
• New Jersey’s Pilot RLA report (forthcoming)

Documentation from Full RLAs

• Colorado’s Audit Center

RLA Tools

• Philip Stark’s BRAVO Ballot Polling method demonstration website
• Philip Stark’s Ballot Comparison method demonstration website
• Kellie Ottoboni’s SUITE/hybrid method demonstration Jupyter notebook
• Neal McBurnett’s RLA sample size calculator
• Ron Rivest’s ElectionAuditWare on GitHub
• Colorado’s Risk-Limiting Audit software (CORLA) on GitHub

Oversight, Transparency, & “Auditing the Audit”

• Verified Voting’s “Checking the Paper Record: A Guide for Public Oversight of Tabulation Audits”

Graphics, Visuals, Video, & Presentations

• Verified Voting’s audit process graphic
• Denver8TV’s 3-minute RLA explainer video
• Colorado SoS’s 30-minute RLA video

Archived conference presentations

• Brennan Center’s event: “Making Every Vote Count: A Practical Guide to Risk-Limiting Audits,” held Jan. 31, 2019
• MIT Election Data & Science Lab’s event: “Election Audit Summit,” held Dec. 7-8, 2018

Recent Academic Research

• Bernhard, M., A. Halderman, K. Ottoboni, R.L. Rivest, and P.B. Stark, 2019. Bernoulli Ballot Polling: A Manifest Improvement for Risk-Limiting Audits, Voting ‘19 to appear.
• Ottoboni, K., P.B. Stark, M. Lindeman, and N. McBurnett, 2018. Risk-Limiting Audits by Stratified Union-Intersection Tests of Elections (SUITE), to appear in Electronic Voting. E-Vote-ID 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer.

Testimony

• Stark, P.B., 2018. An Introduction to Risk-Limiting Audits and Evidence-Based Elections, written testimony prepared for the Little Hoover Commission
• Risk-limiting audit representative group recommendations for CO

Legislation

• Colorado’s Election Rule 25
• California’s AB-2125 (enacted)
• Rhode Island’s Section 17-19-37.4
• Virginia’s § 24.2-671.1
• Washington’s RCW 29A.60.185
• (For state-by-state post-election audit laws and analysis, see: NCSL’s post-election audit resource page)

Endorsements

• American Statistical Association Statement ** Press Release