Georgia will conduct hand recount of all 2020 election votes
Georgia’s secretary of state announced Wednesday that election officials will conduct a recount by hand of all ballots cast in the presidential race amid President Trump’s re-election campaign questioning the accuracy of the results.
The race in Georgia hasn’t been called for either candidate, but President-elect Joe Biden has a 14,111-vote lead in the state.
“This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a re-canvas all at once,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters. “It will be a heavy lift.”
He said all 159 counties in Georgia will undergo a hand recount and he expects to have it completed by Nov. 20 — the deadline for the state to certify the election results.
At stake are the state’s 16 Electoral College votes.
Raffensperger said his office will investigate all claims of voter irregularities. “Every legal vote will count,” he said.
Raffensperger, a Republican, has come under fire from the Trump campaign, which requested a manual recount Tuesday, and GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who called on him to resign over his handling of their races, which will head to runoff elections in January.
“The management of Georgia elections has become an embarrassment for our state,” the two said in a statement Monday. “We believe when there are failures, they need to be called out — even when it’s in your own party.”
Raffensperger said “that is not going to happen.”
“The voters of Georgia hired me, and the voters will be the one to fire me,” he said in a statement.
Perdue and Loeffler face runoffs on Jan. 5 because no candidate was able to gain at least 50 percent of the vote.
Perdue is set to face Democrat Jon Ossoff and Loeffler is set to face Democrat Raphael Warnock in races that will likely determine control of the Senate.
Biden passed the threshold of 270 electoral votes Saturday after Pennsylvania’s results came in in favor of the former vice president, but Trump has not conceded.
With Post wires