Risk-Limiting Audits
In Washington, each county conducts a post-election audit after every election. A risk-limiting audit (RLA) uses statistics to confirm election outcomes. An RLA helps verify that the apparent winner of an election actually won.
In a risk-limiting audit, ballots are randomly selected for review. Ballots are hand-tallied one by one until enough have been sampled to confirm that the correct winner was found the first time. If the winner won by a lot of votes, the sample needed to confirm the outcome may be quite small; if the race was close, the audit will examine more ballots.
The risk limit for statewide risk-limiting audits (RLAs) is 5%.
The risk limit for county-level ballot comparison RLAs is 5%.
The risk limit for county-level ballot polling RLAs is 10%.
2022 General Election
RLA Contest Lot Draw - 2022 General Election.pdf
Random Seed: 38423743138987648987
The random seed is used with the audit software's pseudorandom number generator to identify individual ballots selected for audit.
2022 Primary
| County |
Audit Date |
Target Contest |
Files |
| Spokane |
8/9/2022 |
Legislative District 3 State Representative Position 2 |
Audit Board Report |
Random Seed: 49244940797271775717
RLA software certification:
Arlo Approval for Use - Certification.pdf
Additional resources:
RCW 29A.60.185 - Audit of results.
WAC Chapter 434-261 - Sections 114-119 on risk-limiting audit procedures.
risklimitingaudits.org - Additional resources and RLA academic papers