Georgia state law requires the secretary of state’s office to audit an election every even-year general election.
This year, in the interest of transparency, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is choosing to audit his own race.
“Today is about ensuring confidence in the outcome of our elections in Georgia,” Raffensperger said during a press conference. “Audits are incredibly important in the process to reinforce the importance and primacy of the paper ballots.”
In 2020, Raffensperger ordered a hand audit — formally called a “risk-limiting audit” — of the presidential election, which confirmed President Biden’s narrow win in Georgia.
The audit’s final results determined that Biden edged out Donald Trump by 12,284 votes, a slight drop compared to the pre-audit total since the audit actually increased the vote total for Trump.
Next week, Georgia officials will manually match text on printed ballots with the data from optical scanning machines to determine the accuracy in the outcome of the secretary of state’s race.
“The audit will, with statistical confidence, show that the outcome of the election was correct,” said state Director of Elections Blake Evans. “It will also show that the machines that tabulated the votes worked properly.”
Evans also said that the 159-county audit will confirm the legitimacy of the election state-wide, noting that if the machines functioned correctly for one race, they worked properly for all races.
“We want folks to know that we are trustworthy, the machines are trustworthy, and Georgia elections officials are trustworthy, and this audit is auditing the machines,” Evans said.
The audit will be conducted Nov. 17 – 18 and Raffensperger will certify the results on Nov. 25.
The results of the audit will be posted on the secretary of state’s website.
