The SFA may, on a case-by-case basis, replace up to five percent (5%) of the applications selected for verification. Applications may be replaced when the SFA believes that the household would be unable to satisfactorily respond to the verification request. The SFA must document why the application was replaced. Any application removed must be replaced with another approved application selected on the same basis (i.e., an error prone application must be substituted for a withdrawn error prone application). The newly selected application must then have a confirmation review prior to being verified. In those SFAs where five percent of total applications result in less than one, one application may still be replaced. All results of the five percent calculation are rounded up to the next whole number.
When an application is selected for verification and, prior to hearing back from the household in question, that household is found on a direct certification list, the application does not have to be replaced in the verification sample pool. The application would be marked as a direct certification in the appropriate box in Section 3 of the verification collection report. SFAs should include these applications in Field 5-5 (Number of applications selected for verification) of the verification collection report and indicate the number of these applications that are being converted to direct certification in the remarks portion of the verification collection report.
