Cobb to certify election results, start presidential hand recount

The Cobb Board of Elections and Registration will certify elections results Friday as the department starts counting ballots in the presidential race by hand.

The five-member appointed board will meet to certify all but the presidential results at 12 p.m. in a public meeting that will be shown on Cobb County Government’s YouTube channel.

All 159 Georgia counties have been ordered by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to conduct a manual recount in the presidential race.

Democratic former vice president Joe Biden leads in Georgia by 14,116 points and has 49.52 percent of the vote, while Republican president Donald Trump has 49.24 percent of the vote with nearly 5 million votes cast.

That margin falls within the state’s 0.5 percent margin of threshold for an automatic electronic recount, but Raffensperger took the unusual step of ordering the hand recount.

Raffensperger, a Republican, said Wednesday “this helps build confidence” in an elections process that has come under fire from those in his own party, including U.S. Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Earlier this week they called for his resignation. But Raffensperger responded by saying that if there has been any illegal voting it “is unlikely” it would rise to the numbers to change the outcome in Georgia.

Raffensperger has set a deadline of next Wednesday to have the hand count completed. In Cobb, elections staffers will be working overtime to count 396,549 ballots. The cost and source of funding for the recount is unclear for now, although Raffensperger said Wednesday it’s possible the state could reimburse county elections offices.

In Cobb, Biden got 56 percent of the vote, although most precincts in East Cobb favored Trump.