Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday there will be a hand recount of around 5 million votes in the presidential race.
At a press conference on the steps of the state capitol in Atlanta, Raffensperger said he’s taking the rare step of ordering a hand recount, as well as an audit of paper ballots and recanvassing, as an “all-in-one process” to ensure an accurate and fair outcome.
“This will help build confidence,” said Raffensperger. “It will be a heavy lift, but we will work with the counties to get this done in time for state certification.”
He said Democratic former vice president Joe Biden has a lead of 14,111 votes over Republican President Donald Trump, whose campaign on Tuesday demanded a hand recount in Georgia.
Trump led by around 370,000 votes statewide at the end of election night. Biden has won 849,679 absentee votes that have been counted since then, compared to 451,240 for Trump.
The updated tallies can be found here; Biden has 49.52 percent of the vote and Trump has 49.24 percent, within the 0.5 percent range for a recount in Georgia. Biden got 56 percent of the vote in Cobb County, although most precincts in East Cobb favored Trump.
A hand recount—which is possible due to a 2019 change in state law requiring paper ballots for recounts—will take place in all 159 counties in Georgia. Raffensperger said 97 counties have certified results.
A hand recount is more expensive and time-consuming than an automatic recount conducted by a scanner, and it’s unclear how much that will cost, who will pay for it and how long it will take.
Georgia has to certify its presidential results by Nov. 20. After the hand count is complete, the losing candidate has two business days to request another recount that under state law must be done electronically.
Georgia has 16 electoral votes—the number of the state’s Congressional delegation of two U.S. Senators and 14 U.S. House members. The electoral college meetings will take place on Dec. 14.
Most of the major news outlets that have called the race for Biden have a current electoral college count of 290 for Biden to 217 for Trump, with Georgia and North Carolina still outstanding.
At least 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.
“We are committed to counting every legal ballot,” Raffensperger said in a social media post after the press conference. “Georgia voters deserve accurate, secure results. We stand by our numbers.”
The Cobb Board of Elections and Registration is to scheduled to certify its election results Friday. When asked how Cobb Elections will be conducting that hand recount, and how that process may affect certification, Cobb County spokesman Ross Cavitt said he’s talked with Cobb Elections director Janine Eveler, and “they’re still trying to figure it out.”
UPDATE: Cobb County said late Wednesday afternoon that a “risk-limiting” audit of paper ballots will take begin Friday at 8 a.m. at Jim R. Miller Park Event Center. That’s an audit conducted to make sure if votes were tabulated correctly.
Raffensperger, a Republican former legislator, has come under fire for his handling of the presidential voting, but he’s said there has been no evidence of election fraud in Georgia.
Georgia’s Republican U.S. senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler—both of whom are in Jan. 5 runoffs—called for his resignation on Monday. 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.
“My office will continue to investigate each and every instance of illegal voting. Every legal vote will count,” he said at Wednesday’s press conference. “We will continue to enforce the law.”
Georgia is one of a handful of states where presidential voting is still too close to declare a winner, or where votes are still being counted. Biden also leads in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada and Trump leads in North Carolina.
“This race has national significance,” Raffensperger said. “We get that.”
Biden made a victory speech on Saturday, but Trump is refusing to concede. He and his campaign have made allegations of voter fraud in some of those closely-contested states, including Georgia.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Republican who finished third behind Raphael Warnock and Loeffler in the U.S. Senate special election primary, said Raffensperger’s call for a hand recount is “a victory for transparency. A victory for election integrity. A victory for the American people.”
He’s leading the Trump recount effort in Georgia, and on social media he’s been frequently calling into doubt the election process here and in other states.
Some state Democrats, including 2018 gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, said Trump is only delaying the inevitable. “He lost, and he knows it,”said Abrams, one of Georgia’s 16 Democratic electors.
On Tuesday, Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce, a Republican who was defeated in his re-election bid, said he finds it “extraordinary” that “we have people who question the integrity of the voting process—because they lost.”
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Given the influx of money this state is about to receive for the senate seat run-offs, maybe GA can funnel some of that money to pay for the hand counting.