Participants roll a series of 10-sided dice as part of Georgia’s risk-limiting audit, a process used to review a random sample of election results. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder
They may be rolling dice, but when it comes to election integrity, Georgia’s top officials say they are taking no chances.
The secretary of state’s office opened its doors to the public Thursday to kick off a statewide risk-limiting audit, a process that has been used in Georgia since 2020 to help verify election results across the state.
Twenty participants each got a chance to roll a 10-sided die to generate a 20-digit number. That number was used to select a random batch of ballots, which election workers in each of Georgia’s 159 counties will use to double-check their results ahead of next week’s election certification deadline.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the process was aimed at using a statistically significant sample to ensure that the votes reported by machines on election night were tallied accurately, putting his own spin on the Russian proverb popularized by former President Ronald Reagan.
“In Georgia, our approach is very simple: verify, then trust,” he said. “That is exactly what we are doing here today.”
Election workers will conduct their audits of the batch by hand, ensuring that the words printed on each ballot match the totals reported by ballot tabulators, which count votes by scanning ballot QR codes. A second audit, which uses technology to scan the human-readable text on all ballots cast during the primary election, will also be used to confirm the results.
“If there was an error significant enough to affect the outcome, this process is designed to catch it,” Raffensperger said.
Ballot QR codes will also be the focus of a special legislative session set to begin June 17. Georgia’s current election system relies on a ballot QR code to count votes, but under a state law passed in 2024, QR codes cannot be used for the official ballot count after July 1.
Normally the risk-limiting audit is restricted to one race, but Raffensperger announced that this year, two contests will be checked: The Republican U.S. Senate primary and the Democratic primary for governor.
“(Audits) are not about protecting one candidate or one political party. They are about validating the integrity of the process itself,” he said.
Georgia is one of six states that requires regular election audits under state law. The whole process is open to the public and designed to ensure transparency, said Blake Evans, who serves as Georgia’s elections director. Some counties got started Thursday, but most were expected to begin their work Friday.
“Anybody that wants to go and see their county election officials actually audit the ballots can do that,” Evans said.
The May 19 election results are set to be certified by Friday, June 5.
