Breaking down Georgia recount
State expects to finish by Nov. 20 deadline
With only about 14,000 votes separating President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump in battleground Georgia, the state is heading into a recount of presidential votes.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said Wednesday that the state will recount presidential election results in each county by hand because of the close margin.
On Wednesday, Biden was up by less than 0.3% of the nearly 5 million votes cast in Georgia. On Saturday, he was declared winner of the presidential election as some states continued to count votes, largely because his margins in several states are too wide for Trump to overcome.
Georgia’s presidential race has not yet been called because of the close result, but Biden appears poised to take the state’s 16 electoral votes.
Here’s what you need to know about Georgia’s recount:
Why is this happening?
Georgia law requires an auditing process before the state certifies results. A “risk-limiting audit” includes the checking of a random sample of ballots by hand to compare against machine tabulation, to ensure accurate results.
Raffensperger said Wednesday that he would choose to audit the presidential race. But because the margin between Biden and Trump is so slim, a random sample of ballots would not be a sufficient measure and a full hand recount is triggered.
Raffensperger said the hand recount “is really what makes the most sense with the national significance of this race and the closeness of this race.”
The decision to audit the presidential race is not because of the Trump campaign’s request to do a hand recount, he said.
“This will help build confidence,” Raffensperger said.
A recount is provided for in Georgia law, but it not required, if the trailing candidate comes within a 0.5% margin of the leading candidate. Biden leads by less than 0.3%.
Raffensperger also is under fire from the GOP incumbent senators from his state, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who alleged without evidence that there was misconduct in the administration of the election.
Though the senators called for him to resign, “that is not going to happen. The voters of Georgia hired me, and the voters will be the one to fire me,” Raffensperger said in a statement.
How does a hand recount work?
In a hand recount, instead of scanners reading and tallying the vote on each ballot, scanners will be used only to count ballots.
Election workers will hand sort ballots into piles for each candidate, and the machines will count those piles.
“It will be a heavy lift. We will work with the counties to get this done in time for our state certification,” Raffensperger said.
How long will it take?
The recount is expected to be completed with election results certified by the deadline of Nov. 20, Raffensperger said. The state is responsible for paying for the recount.
He noted that election workers “will be working plenty of overtime.”
Are all 5M ballots being counted?
Yes. While a risk-limiting audit would be done on a sample of votes, the hand recount will include each “legally cast ballot,” Raffensperger said.
A sample of ballots would not be a reliable way to audit the results, he said, because of how tight the race is.
“When you have 5 million votes and the margin is so close, 14,000, if we pulled out 10,000 votes, all of a sudden it could say, well this is the person that won. We pull out 100,000 and this is the person that won. If we pull out a million, this person won,” Raffensperger said. “And that’s why mathematically you have to do a full, handby-hand recount of all because the margin is so close.”
What happens after the recount?
Because the hand recount is triggered by the audit, some have wondered whether the losing candidate can still request another recount after the certification of results.
Responding to whether the Trump campaign could ask for another recount if Trump is still trailing, Raffensperger said he believes that the Trump campaign could request it if the margin was still within 0.5%. Another recount would be scanned rather than counted by hand, Raffensperger said.
Biden has already earned the required 270 electoral votes to win the presidency, which will not change with any outcome of Georgia’s recount.