Risk-limiting audit

Okay kiddo, have you heard of elections? They happen when a lot of people vote to choose someone to be their leader.

But sometimes, people worry that maybe the votes weren't counted correctly. That's where something called a risk-limiting audit comes in.

Basically, a risk-limiting audit is like checking your math to make sure you got the right answer. In this case, you're checking to make sure the election results are accurate.

Here's how it works: first, you randomly pick a bunch of ballots (those are the pieces of paper people fill out when they vote). Then, you count those ballots by hand and compare the results to what the machines said. If the hand count and the machine count match up, you're probably all good!

But if the numbers don't match up, that means something went wrong. Maybe the machine made a mistake or someone cheated. Either way, it means you need to check more ballots.

With a risk-limiting audit, you keep checking more and more ballots until you're pretty sure the original result was correct. It's kind of like keep adding up your numbers until you get the same answer every time.

And that's it! A risk-limiting audit is a way to make sure our elections are fair and accurate.