Auditing a collection of races simultaneously

Understand

A collection of races in a single election can be audited as a group by auditing a random sample of batches of ballots and combining observed discrepancies in the races represented in those batches in a particular way: the maximum across-race relative overstatement of pairwise margins (MARROP).

• A risk-limiting audit for the entire collection of races can be built on this ballot-based auditing using a variety of probability sampling schemes.
• The audit controls the familywise error rate (the chance that one or more incorrect outcomes fails to be corrected by a full hand count) at a cost that can be lower than that of controlling the per-comparison error rate with independent audits.
• The approach is particularly efficient if batches are drawn with probability proportional to a bound on the MARROP (PPEB sampling).