Northampton County has completed a state-mandated audit of the paper ballots from the Nov. 5 election and verified the statistical sample to be 100 percent accurate.

Approximately 1,500 ballots were audited from four precincts: Hellertown Borough 1, Wilson Borough 1, Nazareth Borough 2 and Moore Township Beersville. Each of the four precincts was located in a different district within the County. ES&S provided four DS200 precinct ballot scanners to be used to hand-feed the ExpressVote XL ballot cards from Election Day. In addition, a sample of ballots were scanned again, and the machine operator provided a results tape of the sample for a comparison to the human-readable names printed on the ballot cards.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania mandates that each County audit a minimum of 2 percent of ballots after an election to verify election results. Northampton County voters cast 57,680 ballots Nov. 5, requiring an audit of a minimum of 1,200 ballots. The audit is part of the canvas/certification-of-results conducted after each election.

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