The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Raffensperger orders hand tally in presidential contest THE FOLLOW UP
A ROUNDUP OF POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENT NEWS
The 2020 election is over for Georgia’s new $107 million voting system — just not the rest of us.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered a new tally of all 5 million ballots cast in the presidential election, this time by hand.
Raffensperger issued the order while also saying he doesn’t expect it to change the results of the election, which showed Democrat Joe Biden about 14,000 votes ahead of President Donald Trump in Georgia. He and other election officials have also stressed frequently that there have been no signs of systemic fraud in connection with the election.
Trump’s campaign demanded the hand recount, and other Republicans — without providing any evidence of widespread irregularities or wrongdoing — turned up the heat on Raffensperger, a fellow member of the Grand Old Party, to act on the president’s ultimatum.
U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue even called for Raffensperger’s resignation, saying in a letter — without providing any specifics — that he had “failed to deliver honest and transparent elections.”
Raffensperger refused to quit, saying, “My job is to follow Georgia law and see to it that all legal votes — and no illegal votes — are counted properly and accurately.”
And then, while saying the pressure had no influence on his decision, he ordered the new tally.
“This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once,” Raffensperger said.
That being said, should there be more confidence in a hand count than what the state’s new voting machines produced? It’s debatable.
State and county election officials acknowledge that a hand recount could introduce more inaccuracies than computer scans.
Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system manager, said a hand recount comes with “a likelihood of more human errors.”
Joseph Kirk, the elections supervisor for Bartow County, pointed out that “humans have a hard time counting large batches of anything.”
Kirk and his counterparts in each of Georgia’s 159 counties will be doing the work, and Raffensperger acknowledged that “it will be a heavy lift.”
“But we will work with the counties to get this done in time for our state certification,” the secretary of state said.
They have to complete the tally in time for the state to meet its Nov. 20 deadline to certify its count. State law only allows for an extension if “just cause” can be proved to a superior court judge.
Even then, it may not be over. After the results have been certified, candidates have a right to request a recount if they lost by less than half a percentage point. Trump currently trails Biden by about 0.3 percentage point.