Department of Elections
City and County of San Francisco
John Arntz, Director

For Immediate Release
SAN FRANCISCO, Wednesday, February 16, 2022 – Tomorrow, the Department of Elections will commence the Official Canvass, an audit of the election to ensure the accuracy and validity of the results for the February 15, 2022, Consolidated Special Municipal Election. As part of the Official Canvass, the Department will randomly select ballots for manual tally to verify the accuracy of the voting system used to tabulate the votes.  The selection of ballots will occur on Sunday, February 20, 11 a.m., outside the Department’s office, City Hall Room 48, and is open to public observation.  The selection of ballots can also be viewed via live stream on sfelections.org/observe.  

Following the selection of ballots, the Department will post a recording of the process on sfelections.org/observe.

To randomly select ballots for manual tally, the Department uses 10-sided dice.  After dice are rolled, the numbers facing up are matched to numbers assigned to an itemized list of precincts for which the Department will manually tally cards voted at a number of polling places equal to one percent of all precincts. 

Next, the Department will roll the dice to select a number of batches of vote-by-mail and other ballots that equals one percent of the batches processed.  These batches most likely include ballots from multiple precincts.  For this latter category of ballots, the numbers from the rolled dice are referenced to a list of batch numbers. 

The Department will compare the manual tallies against the results reports issued from the voting system.  The purpose of conducting the manual count and then comparing those results to vote totals tabulated by the voting equipment is to verify that the equipment properly tabulated ballots.

Following the selection of precincts and batches, the Department will collect the ballot cards cast in the selected precincts for manual tally. The manual tally will begin on Tuesday, February 22 at the Department’s warehouse on Pier 31 and continue daily thereafter from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., until all selected ballots are tallied and verified against election results from the voting equipment.  

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Department of Elections
City and County of San Francisco
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
City Hall, Room 48
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 554-4375
sfelections.org