Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, said on Tuesday that an audit of voting machines used in several counties during the 2020 presidential election did not show evidence of hacking or tampering.

Pro V&V, the testing laboratory hired to do the auditing, "found no evidence of the machines being tampered," Raffensperger said in a press release.

The tests were conducted in Floyd, Paulding, Cobb, Morgan, Spalding, and Douglas counties.

"Those were the — those particular counties were chosen because those are the ones that had been elevated concerns from the Republican Party and other activist groups," Raffensperger told a local TV station. "We wanted them to go ahead and just knock that out and answer people's questions and give them that assurance."

Democratic candidate Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Georgia by over 14,000 votes and became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Trump has been promoting conspiracy theories and the false claim that votes cast on voting machines were tampered with and flipped from him to Biden.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whose leadership was chosen by Trump, recently certified the security of the 2020 election and found no evidence of fraud or manipulation.

Biden defeated Trump by over 5.7 million votes and won the Electoral College by a vote of 306 to 232. He will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2021.

From the Nov. 17 edition of "Action News" on ABC affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta:

LINDA STOUFFER, WSB-TV: A randomized audit of the actual voting machines in key counties found no hacking and no tampering took place.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER: We conducted a randomized sampling and audit that included Floyd, Paulding, Cobb, Morgan, Spalding, and Douglas counties. Pro V&V conducted this for our office.
MARK WINNE, WSB-TV: Are you confident that study is comprehensive enough?
RAFFENSPERGER: Those were the — those particular counties were chosen because those are the ones that had been elevated concerns from the Republican Party and other activist groups, and we wanted them to go ahead and just knock that out and answer people's questions and give them that assurance.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.