It’s official: Pennsylvania had another safe and accurate election. Here’s how we know. 

This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism with lead support from the William Penn Foundation, and additional funding from Lenfest, Comcast NBC Universal, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation and Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.

Pennsylvania once again demonstrated the integrity of its elections by relying on its time-tested security procedures.  

A process that many feared would be plagued by contention has concluded without much fanfare, despite the high stakes and intense scrutiny that surrounded the 2024 general election. Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt certified the election results on Wednesday, following post-election audits to confirm their accuracy. 

Lingering public mistrust after the 2020 presidential election and bipartisan concerns over potential election interference heightened the pressure on Pennsylvania officials to deliver a safe and secure election. Pennsylvania’s post-election audit process relies largely on manual efforts, with election workers spending weeks after Election Day meticulously hand-counting ballots. 

The method Pennsylvania uses has been recommended by the US Department of Homeland Security and is considered “the gold standard of post-election audits,” according to state officials. 

“These audits are statistical proof that the reported general election results are accurate,” Schmidt said in a recent news release, “which is a testament to the hard work of county election officials who have spent weeks diligently ensuring the integrity of the election results.”

Over 7 million ballots were cast across 67 counties on Nov. 5, representing a turnout of nearly 77% of the commonwealth’s eligible voters, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. 

That includes many types of ballots, including over 1.9 million mail-in ballots that could not be counted until 7 a.m. on Election Day. 

Here are the two meticulous audit processes the commonwealth used to ensure that millions of votes are counted correctly each year.

A simple dice roll determines how officials audit the ballots

There is no national standard for how audits happen, according to the United States Election Commission. There are different audit-related state laws, and each state differs about when they do the audit and the method for doing it. 

Since Pennsylvania doesn’t have a dedicated election auditor role, the board of elections in each county — and the City Commissioners Office in Philly — audits the ballots.

Pennsylvania’s state laws require a combination of traditional and risk-limiting audits (RLAs). A traditional audit is when a predetermined number of ballots are recounted. In Pennsylvania, all counties must recount 2% of all ballots or 2,000 ballots, whichever is less. 

RLAs, on the other hand, use statistical methods to compare a random sampling of ballots to the machine-recorded results. Reports from the last four years are public on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s website. 

“Risk-limiting audits are the highest standard of comprehensive election audits, not just here in Pennsylvania, but across the country,” Schmidt said. “The RLA process provides a statistically sound, scientific method for confirming that the reported outcome of the election is accurate.”

A lot goes into this process. 

The Department of State began Pennsylvania’s statewide RLA on Nov. 18. Ten department employees took turns rolling 10-sided dice to generate a 20-digit “seed number,” which is used to determine which batches of ballots counties would audit over the next several days.

For example, this year the number was 60136347416595429308. That number was then plugged into a software tool specifically designed for RLAs, which identified the batches of ballots that corresponded to the unique number. 

In total, election officials in 32 counties audited 55 batches of randomly selected ballots. Instead of checking for every race on the ballot, the auditors randomly select one race to make sure the results match up and the ballots are accurate. This year, it was the state treasurer race.

Schmidt said county election officials identified only six vote discrepancies after election workers recounted 37,000 ballots by hand. The discrepancies, at most, resulted in a two-vote change. That’s less than a 0.05 margin of error, meaning statistically, the small number of discrepancies likely didn’t impact the election results.

Such discrepancies are usually the result of human error when manually tabulating audit results or possibly stay or unclear marks on ballots that lead to subjective decisions about a voter’s intent, the Department of State said. 

What’s next? The governor’s stamp of approval

Even though the election has been successfully certified, that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few issues along the way. 

On Election Day, technical problems with in-precinct ballot scanners and select voting machines impacted a small handful of counties, forcing those impacted to stick to paper ballots. Also, some polls opened later than expected, pushing officials to extend voting hours at certain locations. 

After the election, a few counties missed the Nov. 25 deadline to certify local results because of delays caused by the US Senate race recount and some outstanding provisional ballots. The Department of State halted the recount on Nov. 22 after Senator Bob Casey conceded to Dave McCormick.

Despite these disruptions, Pennsylvania’s audit system confirmed none of these issues ultimately impacted the accuracy or results of the election. 

Now, Pennsylvania's election results need to be certified by the governor, according to federal law. Governor Josh Shapiro is required to sign and issue Pennsylvania’s certificate of ascertainment, which officially records and reports the results of the presidential election, by Dec. 11. 

Electoral College members will gather in each state capital on Dec. 17 to cast their state’s electoral votes for president and vice president. Those ballots will then be counted and certified by Congress on Jan. 6 before the inauguration on Jan. 20. 

“It’s important to remember,” Schmidt said, “that Pennsylvania has multiple safeguards in place to ensure that our voting systems provide accurate results.” 

➡️ Read more:

• How Philly officials keep your vote secure — and stop dead people from casting a ballot
• The new-age software and old-school tech protecting your vote in Allegheny County