Harrisburg, PA – After county officials confirmed the accuracy of reported results through two pre-certification audits, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt today certified the results of Pennsylvania’s 2026 primary election.
“After careful review of primary election results from all 67 counties, I am pleased to confirm that once again Pennsylvania held a free, fair, safe, and secure election,” Secretary Schmidt said. “We are grateful to all county election officials who spent weeks diligently counting all eligible votes and conducting two audits to confirm the results.”
As required by state law, once Secretary Schmidt received certified results from all 67 counties, the Department of State reviewed the totals before the Secretary signed the official certification document.
Results were validated by two different audits. The two audits take different approaches to reach the same goal: confirming that all results have been reported accurately.
One audit is a statutorily required statistical recount in each county of a random sample of at least 2% of all ballots cast – or 2,000 ballots, whichever is fewer. All counties must perform this audit after every election.
The other is a statistically based risk-limiting audit, known as an RLA. RLAs involve randomly chosen counties hand-tallying votes for one statewide race in randomly selected batches of ballots.
Demonstrating the Shapiro Administration’s continued commitment to transparency in election administration, the Department livestreamed the process to produce a random 20-digit number used to identify which counties were selected to audit which batches of ballots. The Republican race for lieutenant governor was the only contested statewide race on the ballot, so it was the race audited in this RLA.
In total, election officials in 15 counties manually reviewed 4,435 ballots and determined the reported outcome of the Republican race for lieutenant governor was accurate.
These counties were randomly selected to complete the RLA:
Allegheny
Berks
Bradford
Bucks
Chester
Columbia
Delaware
Lancaster
Lebanon
Lehigh
Luzerne
Montgomery
Pike
Washington
Westmoreland
Learn more about how Pennsylvania verifies the results of every election at vote.pa.gov/audits. Official vote returns for all of May’s statewide races are on the Department’s website.
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