Georgia election officials conduct optional audit of US Senate runoff

To launch the audit, employees from the secretary of state’s office and the public rolled dice in the state Capitol on Tuesday to create a 20-digit number that was fed into a computer to select a randomized sample ballot batches that will be reviewed. Each county will hand count at least 2% of ballots in the runoff, for a total of nearly 164,000 ballots of 3.5 million cast.

The audit, which was planned before election day last week, is optional because state law only requires a review of one race after a general election every two years.

Last month, an audit of the secretary of state’s general election race counted 21 more votes for Republican Brad Raffensperger and 18 fewer for Democrat Bee Nguyen out of a sample of 231,000 ballots audited. Raffensperger won the race by more than 360,000 votes.

The results of the runoff audit will be reported on the secretary of state’s website. Tiny discrepancies based on human counting errors aren’t unusual, Evans said, but larger differences would be investigated.

Then Raffensperger will certify the election by Dec. 23.