Pennsylvania’s 67 counties are required, after each election, to audit their results to ensure accuracy.

The first check they carry out is the “statistical sample”, more commonly known as the “2% audit”. This is a legally required recount of 2% of the ballots cast in a county, or 2,000 total ballots if that number is less, which is usually the case. The ballots are drawn randomly.

Counties are using a different method than they initially used to count ballots during the audit. Some do so using different vote tabulation machines than those used on Election Day, while others count ballots manually.

Counties must complete these recounts before the deadline to certify their election results, which this year is November 25. Some counties have already completed the audit, while others will do so in the next two weeks.

This isn’t the only audit the counties have done. Following a 2018 settlement in lawsuit filed by Jill SteinGreen Party presidential candidate in Pennsylvania now leads statewide limited risk audits.

With the 2% audit, an election administrator could choose to review ballots from only a few precincts. While this review may reveal a problem with those specific precincts or with the ballots cast there, it won’t reveal much about the election as a whole.

A risk mitigation audit is designed to check the margin of a race to confirm that the announced winner actually won. The process begins when Pennsylvania Department of State employees roll a set of 10-sided dice to generate a random number, which is fed into an algorithm that determines which ballots counties should review. This process ensures that no one knows in advance which ballots will be recounted, making it impossible to manipulate the result.

If a race has a smaller margin, the algorithm requires more batches of ballots to be examined to verify the outcome. If the margin is wider, fewer lots need to be checked.

The races that will be included in this year’s risk-limiting audit will be announced Wednesday and the roll of the dice will take place Friday, according to a State Department spokesperson. Counties where a batch is selected will have until the Nov. 25 certification deadline to recount.

When a race goes to a recount

The presidential race in Pennsylvania was decided by a wide enough margin that the outcome was known shortly after Election Day. The same cannot be said for the U.S. Senate race.

As the Associated Press called the race for Republican Dave McCormick based on an analysis of the votes remaining to be counted Outgoing Democratic US Senator Bob Casey did not give in on Tuesday.

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, McCormick had 48.93 percent of the vote to Casey’s 48.5 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. website.

Under Pennsylvania law, a recount is triggered automatically when the result of a race is within the limit of 0.5%. Pennsylvania’s top elections official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, will order the recount by Nov. 14, unless the trailing candidate requests that the process not move forward until noon the day before. The recount must then begin on November 20 and the results must be submitted to the secretary by November 27.

However, recounts rarely change the outcome of a race.

FairVote, a nonprofit organization that advocates for ranked-choice voting, analyzed nearly 7,000 statewide races between 2000 and 2023. The investigation found 36 recounts during that period, only three of which resulted in a change of outcome.

“All three reversals occurred when the initial margin was less than 0.06% of all votes cast for the top two candidates,” the report said.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, there have been seven statewide recounts since the 0.5% rule took effect in 2004. None have changed the winner.

Three voters in a precinct can also request a recount if they believe fraud or error has occurred. Such a recount only applies to ballots cast in the voting precinct, which is the smallest voting district, usually having only a few hundred voters and sometimes no larger than a city block.

Although there were fears that such recounts would be weaponized this year and delay certification of resultsso far this has not happened.