ATLANTA — The Secretary of State’s office released an audit report of the Nov. 5 Presidential election results from all 159 counties in Georgia.
Beginning last Thursday, Nov. 14, election officials in all of Georgia’s 159 counties hand counted randomly selected ballots as part of the statewide audit of the 2024 Presidential Election. A risk limit of 5% was set for the risk limiting audit (RLA), a limit that is among the best in the country for jurisdictions that conduct RLAs.
The Secretary of State’s office says that the audit confirmed the outcome of the contest.
“In total, county election officials audited 442 batches of ballots,” a release from the Secretary of State’s office stated. “Of the 442 batches, 381 (86.1%) had no deviation from the original candidate vote totals. Out of the other 61, all fell within an expected margin of error for a hand count.”
The comparisons show that the machine count of the chosen ballots totaled 46,976 votes for President-elect Donald Trump while the audited count was just 21 votes less at 46,965.
The machine count of Kamala Harris votes was 280,700, just six less than the audited count of 280,706. The difference in machine count and audited count for all four candidates on the Georgia ballot was just eight total ballots.
“This small amount of difference is well within the expected margin of error for an audit of this size, and largely caused by human error during the hand counting process,” the report stated.
“Georgia’s election systems are our nation’s best,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “This is exactly why I’m leading the push to see our reforms instituted on a national level. This audit shows that our system works and that our county election officials conducted a secure, accurate election — they are the cream of the crop.”
Georgia’s audit was supported by Voting Works and their Arlo auditing software.
The requirement for a post-election, pre-certification audit was introduced in Georgia during the 2019 legislative session following the introduction of a voter-verified paper-ballot voting system.
The purpose of the audit is to ensure the correct outcome of election contests.