Biden Retains Victory in Georgia as Recount Ends, What's Next

Election officials in Georgia completed their manual audit of ballots in the presidential election, reaffirming that President-Elect Joe Biden indeed won the state’s 16 electoral votes. As previously projected, Biden has become the first Democrat to win a presidential election in Georgia since 1992.

Tally

According to the results of the audit, Biden won the state with 2,475,141 votes, besting Trump’s 2,462,857. That gives Biden a winning margin of 12,284. That margin has shrunken slightly, however, from the initial results of the election. Prior to the recount, Biden’s margin was projected to be 12,780.

A variance between ballot counts is not uncommon. In fact, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called the slight change in total “well within the expected margin of human error that occurs when hand-counting ballots.” Additionally, Raffensperger, a Republican, lauded the quick turnout of the hand recount, and called the entire election process a success.

“Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” he said in a statement. “This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time.” Most critically, Raffensperger affirmed on CNN that Georgia had “not seen widespread voter fraud,” despite claims by President Trump and his allies.

Next Steps

Now that the audit is over, Raffensperger must certify the votes by Friday. Subsequently, the governor, Republican Brian Kemp, must add his own certification before the results become officially binding. Kemp has been relatively quiet throughout the recount process, and has not commented on whether he will sign-off on Raffensperger’s results.

Reprinted with permission from https://werax.com/biden-retains-victory-in-georgia-as-recount-ends/