Official Georgia machine recount begins in presidential race

Cobb presidential hand recount — *A hand recount finished last week cut Joe Biden’s lead in Georgia to just under 13,000 votes.*

An automatic recount of votes in the presidential race in Georgia began on Tuesday, the third such tabulation in a razor-close battle.

Cobb Elections workers are working from 9-5 Tuesday and Wednesday and the same hours next Monday and Tuesday, and from 9 a.m. until finishing next Wednesday, Dec. 2.

That’s the deadline set by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to elections offices across the state.

A hand recount finished on Friday had Democratic former vice president Joe Biden with a 12,670-vote lead over Republican President Donald Trump in Georgia.

Biden has 49.51 percent of the vote compared to 49.25 percent for Trump, which falls within the 0.5 percent threshold for a recount in Georgia.

Trump has not conceded, three weeks after the election, as his campaign is filing challenges in other states, including Pennsylvania, where he was trailing Biden by 150,000 votes.

Adding to the drama over the weekend were charged remarks by Sidney Powell, an attorney on Trump’s legal team who said she would “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” voter fraud lawsuit.

The Trump campaign quickly cut ties with Powell.

The machine recount will be done by machine and the results will become official. Georgia’s elections board certified all election results last Thursday, but the Trump campaign asked for the formal recount after the hand count was finished.

That was the first time Georgia has done a hand recount. Like that process, the machine recount will add up nearly 5 million votes cast by Georgians in the presidential race.

The public is invited to observe the Cobb Elections recount, which like the hand recount is taking place at Jim Miller Park (2245 Calloway Road, Marietta).