Auditing — Election Security Glossary

Auditing is the practice of independently reviewing election processes and outcomes. The category covers pre-election logic and accuracy testing of voting equipment, post-election risk-limiting audits, performance audits of election offices, compliance audits against federal and state requirements, and financial audits of election administration spending.

Why this category matters for election security is that audits are how election offices demonstrate that they did what they said they did. A jurisdiction can have the most secure procedures in the world, but without independent verification, the public has only the word of the officials. Audits convert that claim into evidence.

The most visible form of election audit in recent years is the risk-limiting audit (RLA), a statistical procedure that compares reported results against a hand count of a random sample of ballots. RLAs are now required or recommended in a growing number of states. They provide a quantitative check on whether the reported outcome is consistent with the underlying ballots, with a controllable probability of confirming an incorrect result.

The terminology in this category covers both the specific audit procedures and the broader discipline of independent review. The concepts here are procedural. They describe how an audit is designed, conducted, and reported.