Georgia heading to recount, top election official says
Georgia’s secretary of state said Friday morning that there will be a recount of the state’s presidential votes, as Joe Biden took a narrow lead of a few hundredths of a percentage point over President Donald Trump.
“With a margin that small, there will be a recount in Georgia,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said at a Friday morning press conference. “Interest in our election obviously goes far beyond Georgia's borders. The final tally in Georgia at this point has huge implications for the entire country.”
Sixteen electoral votes hang in the balance in Georgia, and as Raffensperger spoke, Biden had a lead of 1,098 out of nearly 5 million cast, with just a small number left to be counted. Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system implementation manager, compared the margin to “less than a small high school.”
There are still 4,169 mail ballots left to be counted in the state, according to Raffensperger’s office, with the majority of those coming in Gwinnett County, in Atlanta’s suburbs.
But there are other ballots outstanding: Military and overseas ballots can still be received through Friday, and voters whose ballots were marked as deficient because of missing information can “cure” them on Friday. There are also some outstanding provisional ballots.
“There is still an unknowable amount of ballots that will be available to be counted at some point,” Sterling said.
Sterling also preemptively knocked down any claims of fraud and irregularities in the state. “We’re not seeing any widespread irregularities,” he said, pledging the office would investigate any credible accusations that came up.
