Full Hand Count of Neck-and-Neck Presidential Race Underway in Georgia
Election officials in Georgia’s 159 counties are undertaking a hand tally of the presidential race.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the tight margin in the presidential race — Democrat Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 14,000 votes — means a full hand count is necessary.
The counties were required to begin the count by 9 a.m. Friday. The secretary of state’s office has instructed county election officials to complete the audit by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.
The deadline for the state to certify the results is Nov. 20.
County election staffers will work with the paper ballots in batches, dividing them into piles for each candidate. Then they will count each pile by hand.
The final numbers in the audit count will almost definitely be slightly different than the numbers previously reported by the counties, but the overall outcome should remain the same, according to Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system.
The results will not be released piecemeal as the counties finish counting but instead will be announced once the full tally is complete, he said.
There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points.
Biden’s lead stood at 0.28 percentage points as of Thursday afternoon.
Once the results are certified, the losing campaign can request that recount, which will be done using scanners that read and tally the votes, Raffensperger said.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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