Georgia’s election officials hope to release a report Thursday on a manual recount of the presidential race, and have repeatedly said they expect it to affirm Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead over Republican President Donald Trump.
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The manual recount of around 5 million votes came from an audit required by a new state law and was not in response to any suspected issues with the state’s results or an official request for a recount. The state has until Friday to certify the results that have been certified and submitted by the counties.
Counties were supposed to end the hand count at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, said he expected the secretary of state’s office to release a report on the results by noon Thursday.
After the state certifies the election results, the losing campaign has two business days to request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%. That recount would be done using scanners that read and count votes and counties would pay for it, Sterling said.
It is up to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to select the race to be audited, and he said the presidential race made more sense because of its importance and the narrow margin that separates the candidates. Because of that small margin, Raffensperger said a full manual count was necessary.
Going into the manual recount, Biden led Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. Previously uncounted ballots discovered in four counties during manual counting will reduce that margin to about 12,800, Sterling said.
Other counties found slight differences in results when doing their manual counts, and state election officials had consistently said it was to be expected.
The Associated Press has not declared a winner in Georgia, where Biden led Trump by about 0.3 percentage points. There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a candidate who falls behind if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. AP’s practice is not to call a race that is, or could be, subject to a recount.
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