Floyd County ‘risk-limiting’ audit done, results match
The Floyd County elections office completed a “risk-limiting” audit of the 2022 General Election and the numbers matched up perfectly.
All 159 Georgia counties are required to conduct the audit following November general elections in even-numbered years. The audit is a statistical check meant to decrease the risk of certifying an incorrect election outcome and to check the accuracy of the vote counting scanners.
The goal is to raise the certainty of the election outcome to 95 percent.
A random selection of paper ballots are counted by hand to see if they align with the machine count.
This is very different than what occurred after the 2020 presidential election when there was a recount of all the ballots and then a hand recount.
The contest to be audited is chosen by the secretary of state and this year, it was the secretary of state’s contest, which saw incumbent Brad Raffensperger defeat challenger
Bee Nguyen by more than 300,000 votes.
The rolling of 20 10-sided dice at the Georgia State Capitol on Wednesday determined the random selection of batches chosen for audit.
Each county, including Floyd prepared a ballot manifest as instructed by the secretary of state. The number of ballots that are audited is determined by the closeness of the contest.
“Our department was assigned to audit one of our early voting locations as well as one absentee by mail ballot batch,” said Floyd County elections superintendent Akyn Bailey. “In total we audited 6,031 ballots. I am always eager to complete tasks that assist in building confidence in our election system and processes. This would not have been possible without our skilled and precise audit team.”
The local audit, which was open to the public, was concluded around lunchtime Thursday.
The results have been sent to the secretary of state’s office.
The law requiring the “risk-limiting” audit was passed by the state legislature in 2019.