Georgia to conduct ‘risk limiting audit’ before certifying election winner

Georgia election officials said they would begin Friday conducting a risk-limiting audit under a new state law before certifying the presidential election winner.

The risk-limiting audit will take a statistically significant sample of ballots and examine them by hand to observe whether the declared winner indeed won, NBC News reported.

The audit is designed to find anomalies derived from misconfigured machines, procedural errors, or intentional manipulation and attack.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday that Georgia’s review would render “over 90 percent confidence level” in the results.

He added that certification would be reached by Nov. 13.

Georgia is a key battleground in the presidential race. President Trump leads, but by less than 10,000 votes as ballots are counted.

On Thursday, Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign over the state’s handling of absentee ballots after an hourlong hearing.

The campaign alleged that a witness had noticed late-arriving ballots had not been properly stored and may have been intermixed in with timely ballots. Bass said there was no evidence to support the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7 p.m., when polls closed Tuesday night.