Boulder County successfully completed Risk-Limiting Audit

Boulder County, Colo. – The final official results from Boulder County’s 2020 General Election are available now at www.BoulderCountyVotes.org.

The final official results include the Statement of Votes, a document that shows precinct-by-precinct results for each contest. The Statement of Votes will be forwarded to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office as part of the election close out process.

Last week, elections staff and bipartisan Audit Board members successfully completed the Boulder County portion of the statewide Risk-Limiting Audit. This is a post-election audit that provides citizens with evidence that election results tabulated by our voting system reflect the actual votes cast by voters. The process reviews how a ballot’s votes were captured at the time it was processed by our voting system by comparing the actual physical ballots with their digital tallies captured at the time of processing. To perform the audit, the Secretary of State’s office assigns a random sampling of the exact ballots you must review out of all the ballots cast in an election.

Elections staff also completed the reconciliation process. This process provides the evidence for the Canvass Board to certify that the number of votes counted is equal to or less than the number of ballots cast and that the number of ballots cast is equal to or less than the number of eligible voters. The Reconciliation Report is also available online.

This year’s Canvass Board consisted of Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick and a party representative from the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Lynne McNamara represented the Democratic Party. David Murray represented the Republican Party.

Tuesday afternoon via a remote video conference meeting, a majority of the Canvass Board members certified the election. The republican party member of the Canvass Board declined to sign the documentation on Tuesday, citing the desire to have additional procedure documents and accounting logs that have been requested through the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). Elections staff confirmed receipt of the CORA request and confirmed that those documents will be produced, however, the CORA requested items fall outside the scope of the reports and documentation needed for the Canvass Board to complete certification. Furthermore, the timeline for the CORA fulfillment is after the state certification deadline of November 25 and this had been communicated to the CORA requester last week. Both party representatives thanked election staff for their hard work, presentation, and for answering all their questions. Mr. Murray’s decision not to sign does not impact the final certification. The election results are now certified.

The canvass documents, audit documentation, and the Statement of Votes are available at www.BoulderCountyVotes.org.