Department of Elections
City and County of San Francisco
John Arntz, Director
For Immediate Release
SAN FRANCISCO, Saturday, March 9, 2024 – On March 6, the Department of Elections commenced the official canvass of the March 5, 2024, Consolidated Presidential Primary Election.
The Department must complete numerous tasks during the official canvass before certifying any election. These tasks include the processing and counting of all valid ballots not yet counted, the inspection of all materials returned from polling places to ensure all ballots are accounted for, the reconciliation of roster signatures with poll ballots issued, the remake and processing of any torn, bent, or otherwise unreadable but valid ballots, and the manual tally.
The manual tally is a public process conducted to verify that that the voting equipment properly tabulated ballots and accurately reported results.
During the manual tally, the Department will publicly and manually count all of the ballots cast in 1% (one percent) of randomly chosen San Francisco precincts, as well as 1% (one percent) of the vote-by-mail and provisional ballots cast, also chosen at random.
On Thursday, March 14 at 10 a.m., Director John Arntz will conduct the random selection of ballots for manual tally using 10-sided dice. This process will be open to in-person public observation in the Department’s office in City Hall Room, 48 and both a live stream and a recording of the process will be available via sfelections.org/observe. Given that San Francisco had 514 precincts in the March 5 election, members of the public will randomly select six precincts from which the ballots will be tallied. If the initially selected precincts do not include all of the contests voted upon in the election, the public will continue rolling the dice to select additional precincts until all contests are included in the tally. Following the random selection of precincts, members of the public will randomly select a number of batches of vote-by-mail and provisional ballots that equals 1% (one percent) of batches processed and that will likely consist of ballots from multiple precincts.
Following the selection of ballots for the manual tally, Department staff will collect the selected poll, vote-by-mail, and provisional ballots. On Monday, March 18 at 8:30 a.m., Department staff will begin manual tally at the Department’s warehouse on Pier 31. Counts from the manual tally will be compared to the vote totals generated by San Francisco’s voting system to verify that the equipment accurately tabulated ballots. Manual tally will be open to public observation in person and via a live stream at sfelections.org/observe.
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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