Georgia has finished its statewide risk-limiting audit of the razor-thin presidential race, involving a hand recount that the Secretary of State’s Office said “upheld and reaffirmed the original outcome produced by the machine tally of votes cast,” with the Trump campaign disputing the result.
The Trump campaign dismissed the report, arguing that the hand recount did not include a signature matching process and so “simply recounted all of its illegal ballots.”
“We continue to demand that Georgia conduct an honest recount, which includes signature matching. We intend to pursue all legal options to ensure that only legal ballots are counted,” said Jenna Ellis, senior legal advisor to the Trump campaign, in a statement.
“Headlines are already falsely reporting that Joe Biden is declared the winner in Georgia. Sorry, media, that’s not how it works,” Ellis added, and urged the state not to certify the results.
Biden’s campaign hailed the audit results, with Jaclyn Rothenberg, Georgia communications director for the campaign, saying “the recount process simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected Joe Biden to be their next president.”
“We are grateful to the election officials, volunteers and workers for working overtime and under unprecedented circumstances to complete this recount as the utmost form of public service,” she added.
The audit process also led to counties catching mistakes made in original counts, which Raffensperger’s office said occurred due to counties not uploading all memory cards.
“Those counties uploaded the memory cards and re-certified their results, leading to increased accuracy in the results the state will certify,” Raffensperger’s office said.
Since the margin between the candidates remains less than 0.5 percentage points, the Trump campaign can request a recount after the results are certified, Raffensperger’s office said, noting that the recount would be conducted by rescanning all paper ballots.
“It really is a matter of human error not of some big fraud or conspiracy and people make mistakes, but unfortunately I think this one falls at the feet of our elections director who I’ve been critical of this entire elections cycle,” said Rome City Commissioner, Wendy Davis, in remarks to Fox5 Atlanta.
Raffensperger earlier called for Brady’s resignation after officials found the uncounted ballots on Nov. 15.
