A roll of the dice Thursday at the Georgia State Capitol started a statewide audit of the presidential election, a human review of paper ballots to check results counted by computers.
One by one, election workers and volunteers tossed 10-sided dice onto a table to create a random 20-digit number.
That random number was then fed into a computer to pick a sample of ballots to be reviewed in each of Georgia’s 159 counties over the next few days. The hand-reviewed count will be compared with the machine count to verify the outcome was correct.
The audit will prove to voters that Georgia’s vote count was accurate, said Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office.
“You’re taking away the argument that the computers did something or the black box did something or somebody hacked the machines,” Sterling said. “It should take away all reasonable doubts.”
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Because this year’s presidential election wasn’t as close as in 2020 — when an audit included all 5 million ballots cast — a much smaller number of ballots will be checked to verify the election with at least a 95% statistical confidence level.
Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris by 115,000 votes out of nearly 5.3 million cast, a 2.2 percentage point margin of victory. Four years ago, Trump lost by 12,000 votes in Georgia, a 0.2 percentage point margin.
Election officials plan to audit a fraction of all votes — between 200 and 300 ballot batches out of 15,703 batches statewide. Batches range in size from about 100 to 1,000 ballots.
Georgia is one of five states that conduct this type of audit, called a risk-limiting audit, after each election. State law has required audits since 2020.
The audit must be finished by Tuesday, and then the results will be compared with the machine count of each batch and reported publicly on the secretary of state’s website.
An additional election audit will also be conducted next week, a computerized double-check that was added to state law this year.
The new audit will use text-recognition technology to read candidate names printed on every ballot cast in Georgia, then count the totals. Those numbers will be compared with vote counts from election night, which were generated from QR codes printed on ballots.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
About the Author
