California

State Summary

Signed into law in 1965, the audit law in California calls for every contest and ballot issue on the ballot to be audited by means of a hand count of 1% of the precincts in each jurisdiction.There is no statutory guidance for expanding the audit or binding audit results on official results.

California is currently running a pilot program for risk-limiting audits. The statute passed in 2010 authorizes the Secretary of State to work with a minimum of five volunteer counties to conduct pilot risk-limiting audits in 2011. The Secretary of State will report to the legislature on the risk-limiting audit pilots, and how their effectiveness, efficiency, and cost compare to those of the current 1% hand count. For more information, see the section on Addressing Discrepancies, below.

From 2007 to 2009, additional audits were required in California under a set of emergency regulations issued by the Secretary of State. The regulations required a hand count of 10% of precincts for contests with a margin of victory of less than 0.5%. The regulations specified criteria to expand the audit (up to a full recount). These regulations expired in 2009 and have not been updated or replaced. The expired emergency regulations can be viewed at: http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/pemt.htm.