Trump’s team demands another recount of Georgia’s presidential vote

ATLANTA: President Donald Trump’s legal team said on Saturday (Nov. 21) that his campaign called for another recount of votes in Georgia’s presidential race after results showed Democrat Joe Biden won the state.

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the results of the state elections on Friday, in which Biden beat Trump by 12,670 votes out of about 5 million cast, or 0.25 percent. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp later certified the state’s list of 16 presidential electors.

The statement from Trump’s legal team read: “Today, the Trump campaign filed a recount petition in Georgia. We focus on ensuring that all aspects of Georgia State Law and the United States Constitution are followed so that every legal vote is counted. President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest count in Georgia, which must include signature matching and other vital safeguards.

“Without matching signatures, this recount would be a sham and would again allow illegal votes to be counted,” the statement added. “If there is no signature match, this would be just as bogus as the initial vote count and tally. Let’s stop giving people false results. There must be a time when we stop counting the illegal ballots. Hopefully it will come soon.”

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Georgia law allows a candidate to request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5 percent. The count would be done through scanners that read and tabulate the votes. County poll workers have already done a full manual tally of all votes cast in the presidential race. But that stemmed from a mandatory audit requirement and is not considered an official tally under the law.

State law requires that a race be audited by hand to ensure the machines counted the ballots accurately and Raffensperger selected the presidential race. Due to the narrow margin in that race, a full manual ballot count was necessary to complete the audit, he said.

READ: Wisconsin officials say Trump watchers obstruct recount

Trump has criticized the audit, calling it a “joke” in a tweet stating without evidence that “thousands of fraudulent votes have been found.” Twitter has flagged the post for containing disputed information.

During the audit, votes that were not previously counted were found in several counties, requiring recertification of the election results in those counties prior to state certification of the results.