Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Wednesday that the state will would do a full manual recount of its 2020 presidential ballots, where former Vice President Joe Biden was ahead of President Trump by 14,101 votes as of November 11.
According to Brad, the major goal is to have the audit completed by Nov. 20, the state deadline for certification.
“This race has national significance, national importance,” said Raffensperger, surrounded by a dozen county election officials. “We follow the process and we understand the significance of this — for not just Georgia, but for every single American. At the end of the day, when we do a hand count, then we can answer the question of what was the final margin in this race.
“We’re doing this because it is really what makes the most sense,” he said. “With the national significance of this race, and the closeness of this race, we have to run a statewide audit. This is the race that makes the most sense… We’ll be following the process on that.”
The full manual recount was deemed necessary because the margin between Biden and Trump were too close, Biden was ahead of Trump by 14,101 votes out of 4.9 million cast statewide.
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Georgia’s election system has come under the national spotlight since 2020’s Election Day due to Biden’s surprising unofficial victory over Trump and because its two U.S. Senate races did not have a winner with more than 50 percent of the vote, which triggered runoffs to be held on Jan.5, 2021. If the Democratic candidates win, the U.S. Senate’s majority will revert to Democratic control, giving Biden a path to pass laws instead of issuing executive orders.
But before looking to who assumes power in 2021, Georgia—like most states—has to wrap up its 2020 election. That process involves several little-known steps, where local election officials reconcile vote totals and approve or reject problematic ballots to finalize their results. (That’s called the canvass) Local results are reported to state officials, who certify the winners.
