Risk Limiting Audits: What They Are and Aren't
Philip Stark
Voting Village @ DEF CON 33 · Day 1 · Voting Village
Professor Philip Stark, a distinguished Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a former member of the Board of Advisors of the EAC, delivered a comprehensive and deeply technical presentation on **Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs)**. This talk demystified the mathematical foundations and practical implications of RLAs, which have become recognized as the gold standard for post-election audits. Stark, widely credited as the intellectual and mathematical architect of RLAs, meticulously explained what these audits are designed to achieve, how they function at a fundamental level, and critically, what they are not capable of proving.
AI review
Stark is the originator of this field — not a popularizer, not a secondary contributor — and it shows. The mathematical core is explained with genuine depth, the distinctions between what RLAs do and don't prove are precisely drawn, and the practical limitations get as much airtime as the methodology's strengths. A few sections read like transcript padding rather than technical exposition, and the 'demo' is essentially deferred to another room, but neither knocks this below a strong accept.