From the Whatsupnewp crew:

On Friday, February 11th, the Rhode Island Board of Election hosted a group of national elections integrity experts to conduct a pilot Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) utilizing a new algorithm designed to improve the efficiency of the RLA process. The pilot was run using ballots cast for the November 2, 2021 Portsmouth special referenda (Question 1). The RLA also served as a refresher for Board of Elections and local Board of Canvassers staff.

“Rhode Island is a leader in the use of Risk Limiting Audits to ensure the integrity of our election results, and we were pleased to partner with national experts to pilot a new algorithm designed to improve the efficiency of the RLA process,” said Robert Rapoza, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Board of Elections. “Results from this pilot RLA will ultimately be published and reviewed by elections experts around the country. We were pleased to help play a part in work to further improve RLAs, considered the ‘gold standard’ of election auditing techniques.”

The pilot RLA took approximately 3-hours to complete and was successful in one round in which 240 ballots (out of 3,814 total ballots cast) were pulled and examined. The risk limit came out to 4.18% which means there is a 95.82% chance that the outcome is correct. The new algorithm would have required half the ballots to have likely achieved the same results.

Along with Board member Bill West and Board of Elections staff the following people participated in the pilot RLA:

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