Denver, CO –The Rhode Island Board of Elections will be present for the nation's first statewide risk-limiting post-election audit taking place in Denver, Colorado on Nov. 16-18. Board staff will be part of a twelve-member group of observers consisting of federal and state election officials, advocacy groups, and academics who are interested in witnessing the first large-scale implementation of risk-limiting post-election audits in the nation.
The demonstration is being conducted by the Office of the Colorado Secretary of State and Arapahoe County and will occur at two sites: the Secretary of State administrative offices in downtown Denver, as well as the Arapahoe County Election Warehouse in Littleton, CO.
Board staff will observe state-level procedures in the Secretary of State's office, and the county-level processes at Arapahoe County. Colorado will also be demonstrating it's open-source software application called the Colorado RLA, developed specifically by the State of Colorado for this purpose due to the math and data-intensive nature of risk-limiting audits.
In 2017, the Rhode Island General assembly passed legislation requiring the Board of Elections to implement post-election risk-limiting audits in the state by 2020, with optional implementation by 2018.
The Board of Elections has partnered with Common Cause RI, and staff at the University of Rhode Island, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a risk-limiting post-election audit procedure for RI. The visit to observe risk-limiting audits in Colorado builds on these partnerships and is part of the Board's goal of conducting a pilot risk limiting audit after the General Election in November 2018.