The audits will cover the races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state and U.S. Senate, as well as all 14 congressional seats. A further state-office contest will be selected at random, Elections Director Blake Evans said.

The expansion follows a law passed by the Georgia General Assembly earlier this year. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the audits are intended to test both the voting equipment and the reported count. “We audit the fool out of it,” he said, arguing that the process can help demonstrate that ballots are counted accurately and only once.

In a risk-limiting audit, county election officials enter data into a system called ARLO, which randomly chooses batches of paper ballots for hand counting. Officials compare those totals with the counts produced by voting machines. Raffensperger also said the state will conduct a separate retally of scanned images of paper ballots for every race.

Georgia conducted one risk-limiting audit in each statewide election from 2020 through 2025, according to the officials. The audits examined the presidential contest in 2020 and 2024, the secretary of state and U.S. Senate races in 2022, a Public Service Commission race in 2025, and two contests in the May primaries this year.

Evans said Georgia would be the first state to conduct more than two risk-limiting audits in an election. The increased checks will put more contests under post-election review, though the plans described by officials rely on election administrators and county staff to carry out the counting and comparisons.