Insta
Georgia Vote Audit Confirms Biden Won The State Albeit With A Reduced Margin Of 12,284 Votes
US President Donald Trump and Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Joe Biden (right). (Illustration: Swarajya Magazine)
A risk limiting audit on Thursday (Nov 19) confirmed that Joe Biden has won the presidential election in the state of Georgia.
The results marks the first time since 1992 that a Democratic party presidential candidate has won in Georgia, widely regarded an impregnable Republican party bastion.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that the results of the Risk Limiting Audit of Georgia’s presidential contest upheld and reaffirmed the original outcome produced by the machine tally of votes cast.
By law, Georgia was required to conduct a Risk Limiting Audit of a statewide race following the November elections.
“Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” said Secretary Raffensperger. “This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time.”
According to the initial results last week, Biden was projected to win the state by about 14,000 votes, a margin small enough for state elections officials to immediately trigger a by-hand recount.
The audit process led to counties catching making mistakes they made in their original count by not uploading all memory cards. Thousands of votes that weren’t previously included in the state’s overall tally of ballots in the presidential election was uncovered in Georgia during the recount process,
Trump narrowed the margin over the past week, mostly as election workers in some Republican-leaning counties discovered ballots that hadn’t been tallied initially,
2,600 ballots in the Republican-leaning Floyd County that hadn’t originally been tallied helped President Donald Trump reduce his 14,000-vote deficit to Joe Biden. The problem is said to have occurred because county election officials failed to upload votes from a memory card in an ballot scanning machine. Trump gained nearly 800 net votes from the discovered ballots with 1,643 new votes for the incumbent president and 865 for Biden.
The final tally after the audit however showed that Biden still beat Trump by 12,284 votes, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The president has refused to concede defeat to Biden, and has claimed Democrats “stole” the national election through widespread voter fraud.
Because the margin is still less than 0.5%, Trump can still request a recount after certification of the results. That recount will be conducted by re-scanning all paper ballots.
Support Swarajya's 50 Ground Reports Project & Sponsor A Story
Every general election Swarajya does a 50 ground reports project.
Aimed only at serious readers and those who appreciate the nuances of political undercurrents, the project provides a sense of India's electoral landscape. As you know, these reports are produced after considerable investment of travel, time and effort on the ground.
This time too we've kicked off the project in style and have covered over 30 constituencies already. If you're someone who appreciates such work and have enjoyed our coverage please consider sponsoring a ground report for just Rs 2999 to Rs 19,999 - it goes a long way in helping us produce more quality reportage.
You can also back this project by becoming a subscriber for as little as Rs 999 - so do click on this links and choose a plan that suits you and back us.
Click below to contribute.
Latest
