Georgia requires risk-limiting audits for all state and federal elections, which happen after an election and verifies outcomes have been appropriately licensed. A video circulating on-line incorrectly recognized an election official discussing these audits and conflates them with vote-counting procedures.
In an Instagram put up captioned, “GA election official Gabriel Sterling says audits will happen after Election Day as a result of it’s ‘nerve racking’ to depend ballots in entrance of ballot watchers,” a person in a video clip tells a CNN reporter how Georgia conducts audits.
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The individual within the video shouldn’t be Gabriel Sterling, chief working officer at Georgia’s secretary of state’s workplace. In each the Instagram video and the video’s full CNN transcript, the person is recognized as Joseph Kirk, an elections supervisor in Bartow County, Georgia.
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Kirk’s feedback within the video had been a response to the reporter asking him a couple of new Georgia rule handed Sept. 20 that might require a hand depend of ballots alongside the machine counts already in place. A Georgia decide blocked the hand-count election rule Oct.15, saying it added “uncertainty and dysfunction” to the method weeks earlier than Election Day.
Within the clip aired Oct. 12, Kirk says:
“I need to be clear, I don’t have an issue at hand-counting ballots. There’s completely different instances to do this, there’s completely different causes to do this within the course of we all know we undergo is known as an audit. However we do it after the election, in a managed atmosphere the place it’s simpler to look at, simpler to observe the method and my of us have an opportunity to relaxation first. We’re simply giving of us an opportunity to make a mistake. We’re simply having very, very drained, in lots of instances, senior residents attempt to hand depend stuff in entrance of individuals, which will be nerve racking.”
Counting votes is a separate course of from an audit. Georgia is one in every of 5 states which have statutes mandating risk-limiting audits. Votes are counted to find out an election’s consequence; risk-limiting audits verify a pattern of ballots after an election to confirm that the outcomes have been appropriately licensed.
Mike Hassinger, a Georgia secretary of state spokesperson, informed PolitiFact in an e-mail that risk-limiting audits have been performed after election outcomes had been licensed in each election since 2020 and are “open to commentary by the general public.”
Hassinger despatched PolitiFact a calendar displaying the risk-limiting audit for Georgia’s 2024 normal election will happen Nov. 14 to Nov. 15. He mentioned the audit sometimes takes two to a few days.
We charge the declare that Georgia election official Sterling says audits will happen after election day as a result of it’s “nerve racking” to depend ballots in entrance of ballot watchers False.
