NYT, Nov. 20, 2020 Georgia election official will certify Biden’s victory: ‘Numbers don’t lie.’
ATLANTA — Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, will certify the state’s presidential election results on Friday, likely between 10 a.m. and noon Eastern, making official the victory of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. there and ensuring that he would receive Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.
The certification will follow a hand recount of nearly five million votes that Georgia election workers performed over the past week. The recount found that Mr. Biden beat President Trump by more than 12,000 votes.
Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs described the likely certification timeline in a text message Friday morning. At 8 a.m., Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican gave a news conference at the state capitol in which he stated, as he has numerous times, that Mr. Biden had won Georgia.
“Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by the motto that numbers don’t lie,” Mr. Raffensperger said. “I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct.”
The official documentation of Mr. Biden’s triumph in Georgia, a state no Democrat had won in nearly three decades, underscored the resurgent power of the party. It also bolstered Mr. Biden’s electoral tally over Mr. Trump, who has refused to concede or acknowledge his loss. Georgia brings Mr. Biden to 306 electoral votes — the total Mr. Trump won in 2016 and called a “landslide.”
The certification of the votes in Georgia comes amid significant political turmoil and pressure. Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, was accused of mismanaging the election by Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia Republicans who are facing high-stakes runoff races in January that will determine party control of the Senate. Both are ardent supporters of Mr. Trump, who has made baseless claims that the election was tainted by fraud.
Mr. Raffensperger has asserted since Election Day that the process he was charged with overseeing was trustworthy.
Last week, the Trump administration demanded a hand recount of the more than five million ballots cast in Georgia’s 159 counties. Mr. Raffensperger subsequently ordered the recount, saying it was part of a “risk-limiting audit” of the votes.
The audit, which spanned six days and involved hundreds of employees, uncovered a number of uncounted ballots in four counties.
The audited vote totals showed that Mr. Biden defeated Mr. Trump by 12,284 votes, with Mr. Trump gaining 1,872 net votes compared with a tally officials gave earlier in the week. The newly discovered ballots ate into Mr. Biden’s statewide lead, which stood at 14,156 votes earlier this week.
By law, the secretary of state was obliged to certify the election results before 5 p.m. on Friday. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, must then certify the results by 5 p.m. on Saturday. (The law states that the governor “shall certify the slates of presidential electors receiving the highest number of votes,” which appears to give him no choice but to choose electors who support Mr. Biden.)
Although there is no mandatory recount law in the state, the loser can ask for one if the margin of victory is less than half a percentage point, as is the case in Georgia. Mr. Trump will have two business days to do so. If he does, the recount will be done by high-speed scanning machines, a much faster process than a hand count.
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