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The US state of Georgia has begun hand-counting every vote cast by its voters in the presidential election as part of an audit of initial results showing Joe Biden narrowly leading Donald Trump.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, announced the audit Wednesday, a day after the Trump campaign called for the 5 million votes cast in the state to be manually reverified.
Raffensperger has come under intense pressure from his party, as Trump has refused to accept the election results and instead challenged Biden’s victory.
Under Georgia law, the clerk must choose an electoral race in the state in which to conduct an audit. Raffensperger denied choosing the presidential race in response to the Trump campaign’s request.
“With the national importance of this race and the closeness of the race, we have to do a statewide audit, this is the race that makes the most sense,” he said at a news conference Wednesday.
Biden has a lead of just over 14,000 votes in Georgia. It is unclear whether a manual count would significantly alter that margin. His electoral college victory would still be assured even if he lost all 16 state electoral votes.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, has come under fire from members of his own party after the election © AP
The Trump campaign welcomed the audit, telling reporters Wednesday that it was simply the “first step” toward its goal of undoing Biden’s victory.
“Everyone is looking for a single action that is the silver bullet to reverse the entire choice. It’s going to be a process, ”said Tim Murtagh, Trump’s campaign communications director.
“President-elect Biden’s margin is now more than 14,000 votes,” said Paige Hill, spokeswoman for Biden’s campaign. “At the end of this manual recount process, we are confident that the election day result will be reaffirmed: Georgians have selected Joe Biden as their next commander-in-chief.”
Georgia is required to certify its results by November 20, and Raffensperger admitted Wednesday that completing the manual count by then would be “heavy work.”
“We will count every sheet of paper,” he said, noting that the new total after the audit would be the official result.
The losing candidate could still request a formal recount, a separate process under Georgia law, if the margin of victory is less than 1%. That count would be done by machine, Raffensperger said.
The state’s two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, publicly called for Raffensperger’s resignation on Monday, accusing him of mismanaging the election. A Democratic presidential candidate has not won in Georgia since 1992.
Loeffler and Perdue head into a runoff in January against their respective Democratic rivals in races that will determine which party will control the Senate under the Biden administration.
Many top Republican politicians and key Trump administration officials have so far refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the election. The Trump family has warned Republicans that their base will not forget it if they turn against the president.
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