State creates random number for post-election audit

Election officials are still working to certify Pennsylvania’s election results. The next step is a statewide audit considered by election experts to be the gold standard for reviewing voting machine counts. “Risk-limiting” audits are designed to catch any unseen anomalies in vote counts that could improperly cause a race to be called for the wrong candidate. The process starts with creating a random number by rolling a 10-sided die 20 times. Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, led a livestream on Friday in which several people rolled the die before Schmit called out the number like a lottery announcement. “Once we generate the random number, it will be used to identify the batches of ballots to be audited,” he said during the livestream. “Over the next few days, auditors in the randomly selected counties will review and hand-tally votes that were cast in the context for governor.” All that randomness makes it impossible to predict which ballots will be reviewed, so even if