Georgia election workers are hand-counting samples of paper ballots from 20 different races this week — all 14 of the state's U.S. House contests and six statewide offices from the November 3 election — in the largest post-election audit the state has ever run, after a new law expanded its risk-limiting audits from one or two contests to 20.
Source: Atlanta Patriot
The Secretary of State's office started the audits on Thursday, the Atlanta Patriot reported on November 14. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he stands by the accuracy of the results and, quoting Ronald Reagan, called the exercise "trust but verify," according to WSB-TV. He told the station the audits will be done by Wednesday, ahead of the state's certification deadline on Friday, November 20.
How the hand count works
The process begins in public. According to WSB-TV, randomly chosen members of the public rolled 20 ten-sided dice outside the State Capitol to seed the audit. Counties load their ballot data into the state's audit software, called ARLO, which uses that seed number to pick which batches of paper ballots are counted by hand. Workers then tally those paper ballots by manual inspection and compare the hand tally with what the scanners reported.
Georgia's audit statute, O.C.G.A. § 21-2-498, requires a hand count only — in the law's words, "manual inspection of random samples of the paper official ballots." Each county must audit in public view and release the details of its audit within 48 hours of finishing.
In plain terms, if the reported winner of a contest were actually wrong, the audit would have no more than a 6% chance of missing that. Close races need bigger hand-count samples to reach the bar; lopsided races need very few ballots — which is how the audit can confirm a winner without recounting every ballot.
Why the list jumped from two races to 20
The expansion did not come from the Secretary of State's office. Senate Bill 3EX, passed in the June special session and signed by Governor Brian Kemp, widened the list of contests covered by the audit statute. For comparison, Georgia ran one audit per statewide election from 2020 through 2025, and two for this May's primaries. Georgia elections director Blake Evans told WSB-TV in October: "We're the first state in the country to do more than two risk-limiting audits, and we're doing 20."
In Fulton County, the state's most populous county, the public may watch the work at the Elections Hub and Operations Center, 5600 Campbellton Fairburn Road in Union City. The county's public notice says its audit started November 13 at 10 a.m. and runs until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, November 17, and lists the elections office's main line, 404-612-7020, for schedule changes.
What this audit can — and cannot — prove
A risk-limiting audit answers one question well: did the machines pick the right winner in the audited contests? It does not cover state House and Senate seats, county commissions, school boards or local ballot questions. The Atlanta Patriot noted that Fulton's transportation sales tax renewal passed by about 3,800 votes out of more than 255,000 cast, according to the county's official results — a close result that is not among the 20 audited contests.
A hand count of paper ballots also cannot catch ballots that never entered the count in the first place. The paper noted that a missed memory card in Seminole County, which flipped a state House race, was caught by comparing voter check-ins with ballots reported — a different safeguard, called reconciliation. Audits and reconciliation do different jobs, and Georgia needs both.
Verified Voting, the nonpartisan group that tracks state audit laws, notes that Georgia's statute does not say whether audit results are binding. If a sample ever contradicted a reported outcome, that silence could invite a legal fight — a gap the legislature could close before it matters.
What happens next
Counties are expected to finish by Wednesday, and the state must certify its results by Friday, November 20. Raffensperger, who leaves office in January, has said he hopes his elected successor is restored to the State Election Board, a seat lawmakers took from his office after 2020. Separately, the Election Equipment Specifications and Standards Committee created by SB 3EX owes the legislature its voting-system recommendations by January 31, 2027, and the next General Assembly will decide whether to fund them.