The Department of Elections Schedules Selection of Ballots for Manual Tally for the September 16, 2025, Special Recall Election

Department of Elections
City and County of San Francisco
John Arntz, Director

For Immediate Release
SAN FRANCISCO, Friday, September 19, 2025 – On September 24, at 9 a.m. the Department of Elections will conduct the random selection of ballots cast in 1% (one percent) of San Francisco precincts, as well as 1% of the vote-by-mail ballots cast for manual tally. The Department will also manually tally all provisional ballots cast in the September recall election. The Department will use 10-sided dice to ensure the selection process is wholly random.

The manual tally is a public process conducted to verify that that the voting equipment properly tabulated ballots and accurately reported results.

The process will be open to public observation in person in the Department’s office in City Hall, Room 48, and will also be available via live stream and recording at sfelections.gov/observe. Given that San Francisco had 20 precincts in the September 16 election, the selection process will include ballots cast at one precinct’s polling place and one batch of vote-by-mail ballots. All provisional ballots will also be manually tallied.

After the selection is complete, Department staff will gather the ballots and begin the manual tally. This process will also be open to public observation both in person and online at sfelections.gov/observe.

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