San Francisco Sun

The San Francisco Department of Elections has announced plans to select 1% of the ballots cast in the November 5, 2024, Consolidated General Election for a manual tally. This process is part of the post-election canvass and will take place on November 19 at 10 a.m. in City Hall Room 48. The selection will be conducted using 10-sided dice.

The public is invited to participate and observe the selection process either in person or via a live stream on the Department's website. A recording will also be available online at sfelections.org/observe.

With a total of 501 polling places involved in the election, at least five precincts must be selected to meet the requirement for manual tallying. If these precincts do not cover all contests voted upon, additional precincts will be chosen through further dice rolls until all contests are included. Similarly, batches of vote-by-mail and provisional ballots equal to 1% of those processed will also be selected using dice.

Once polling place, vote-by-mail, and provisional ballots are selected, they will be prepared for tallying by Department personnel. The tallying process is scheduled to begin on Thursday, November 21 at 8:30 a.m., taking place at the Department’s warehouse on Pier 31. The results from this manual tally will then be compared with those generated by San Francisco’s voting system to ensure accuracy.

For security purposes, any vote-by-mail or provisional ballots that have not yet been transferred to Pier 31 for retention will be escorted by Sheriff’s deputies.