November 18, 2020 ☼ georgia ☼ election-2020 ☼ recount
Source: NPR - Link
Georgia election officials expect to release the results of a statewide audit by noon Thursday, as a handful of counties finish data entry from a full hand recount of 5 million presidential votes.
Gabriel Sterling with the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday afternoon that at least 21 of 159 counties show their risk-limiting audit is still in process, including some of the large jurisdictions in metro Atlanta. The deadline for the audit is 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.
“We cannot do the full quality-control process until all the data entry is in there,” he said. “We will likely be having to use every minute of that midnight deadline.”
Announcing the hand audit last week, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the recount was necessary because of the close margin of the race.
Since Friday morning, thousands of workers across the state have counted each ballot to ensure that President-elect Joe Biden did narrowly defeat President Trump in the Nov. 3 contest in Georgia. While the risk-limiting audit is designed to check the correct winner and not change the margins, four counties uncovered a few thousand votes that were not originally uploaded to the state’s election results. Those votes narrowly cut into Biden’s margin but are not nearly enough to reverse Biden’s lead.