What did Georgia’s official audits and recounts specifically examine and conclude about the 2020 results?
Executive summary
Georgia’s official post‑2020 procedures included a state‑mandated risk‑limiting audit that turned into a full manual hand tally of the presidential contest and a subsequent machine recount; both the hand audit and the recount reaffirmed that the certified winner remained Joe Biden by roughly 11,779 votes, and statewide reviews found only small, expected tally differences consistent with human hand‑counting error [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What was audited and why: a statewide risk‑limiting audit turned full manual tally
Georgia law required a risk‑limiting audit of a statewide contest after the November 2020 election, and because the presidential margin was so narrow officials implemented that audit as a full manual hand count of every paper ballot in the presidential contest to limit the risk of an incorrect certification [1] [2].
2. What the manual audit examined: ballots, batches and hand tallies
The hand audit examined the physical paper ballots across all 159 counties, including 41,881 vote batches collected from county batch sheets, conducting a manual tally of each ballot in the presidential contest rather than a smaller statistical sample; the state reported the differential between the audit and the original machine tally was within normal human hand‑count error rates [4] [1].
3. Recounts and retabulations: machine rescans and final certification
After the manual audit, Georgia also performed a machine recount — rescanning ballots through tabulators — and re‑certified results; those successive counts (initial machine, hand audit, and machine recount) produced small adjustments but all confirmed the same winner and the certified margin of about 11,779 votes in favor of Biden [3] [2].
4. Size and character of discrepancies: small, localized, expected errors
The audits and recounts uncovered modest discrepancies: most counties saw no change, the highest county error rate in the recount was reported as 0.73%, many counties changed by fewer than ten ballots, and the kinds of differences matched known patterns of overvotes/undervotes and hand‑count rounding rather than evidence of systemic flipping of votes [4] [1] [5].
5. Fulton County issues and subsequent reviews: procedural lapses, not proof of fraud
Independent oversight and media investigations later documented procedural problems in Fulton County — including reports of duplicate absentee ballots identified in a county audit and later findings about unsigned tabulator tapes covering large numbers of ballots — but state and independent reviews cited managerial disorganization and errors rather than proof that ballots were fraudulently altered or that the statewide outcome was invalidated [6] [7] [8].
6. Contrasting interpretations and lingering scrutiny
While state election officials and peer‑reviewed studies concluded the audits and recounts validated the certified outcome and that the voting system “functioned properly,” scholars and critics have pointed to the count differences between the multiple tallies and to lapses in recordkeeping as reasons for deeper reforms and continued scrutiny; one academic analysis warned that even robust RLAs cannot fully compensate for weaknesses in the underlying vote record and highlighted substantial disagreements among tallies in isolated places [9] [10] [11].
7. What the official conclusions did — and did not — resolve
Officially, Georgia’s RLA/hand tally and recount sequence reaffirmed the initial machine‑count winner and left the certified statewide result intact [1] [2]; the process documented small, explainable discrepancies and prompted after‑action reviews of county practices, but it did not, and could not by itself, erase later questions about recordkeeping or isolated procedural errors that watchdogs and prosecutors later investigated [7] [12] [13].