Colorado Secretary of State’s Office Begins Post-Election Bipartisan Risk-Limiting Audit of Colorado’s 2021 Coordinated Election

Denver, November 15, 2021 - Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold convened a public meeting today to establish the random seed for the 2021 Coordinated Election Bipartisan Risk-Limiting Audit (RLA). RLAs provide a high statistical level of confidence that the outcome of an election is correct.

“Post-election Risk-Limiting Audits verify our election outcomes and help instill voters with confidence that our elections are secure and accurate,” said Secretary Griswold. “We are proud that Colorado is the safest state in which to cast a ballot, and the bipartisan Risk-Limiting Audit is a critical piece in helping ensure that.”

At the meeting, a 10-sided dice was rolled, establishing each digit of a 20-digit random seed. The division’s voting systems team then entered the random seed into a pseudo-random number generator incorporated in the Secretary of State’s open-source RLA software. This process resulted in a selection of individual ballots for each county to examine and audit, which is both truly random and replicable, thus ensuring the integrity and statistical validity of the audit.

The random seed 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, the Secretary of State’s office selected the statewide and countywide target contests for the 2021 Coordinated Election RLA. The complete list of target contests is available on the Audit Center.