■ A Georgia election audit confirmed Republican Brad Raffensperger as secretary of state.

ATLANTA — A hand count of random batches of votes in Georgia’s recent election for secretary of state has confirmed Republican Brad Raffensperger’s victory, state election officials said.

The audit — required by state law — turned up a small difference in votes from the machine count used during the election, but the difference was well within the expected margin of error, the Secretary of State’s office announced Friday.

“This audit shows that our system works,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

The audit follows a law passed in 2019, not from any concerns about the integrity of the state’s election results. An audit is required for general elections in even-numbered years on a race selected by the secretary of state. It must be completed before the election results are certified.

Raffensperger announced earlier this month that he was choosing his race for the audit because it had the widest margin of victory, which would make the audit easier for counties to carry out. Raffensperger beat Democratic state House Rep. Bee Nguyen by more than 9 percent.