A handful of Georgia counties worked up to the deadline to submit their hand-counted audits to the state.
Now state election officials are preparing for a busy couple of days and the looming question of whether they’ll be asked to do a second recount.
“There’s a lot of moving parts. And our teams and accounting teams remain very busy for the next 48 hours,” said Gabriel Sterling with the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
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All Georgia counties had until midnight Thursday to count and submit any ballots for the audit.
Officials expected no major issues past the deadline and a full audit report is expected to be released sometime Thursday, according to Sterling.
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“Every ballot at this point, barring something strange, has been looked at by an audit team in all 159 counties,” he said.
The audit has turned up uncounted votes in Floyd, Fayette, Walton and Douglas counties. President Donald Trump picked up 1,375 votes in total but still trails Joe Biden by just under 13,000 votes.
“Just those four as far as I know, because nobody’s changed their otherwise vote totals that they had already sent him to certify,” Sterling said. “It still doesn’t even come close to changing the outcome
University of North Georgia Professor Carl Cavalli says the audit didn’t find enough mistakes for him to question the integrity of the election.
“It really shows that the system works. And it shows that it’s really going to take a lot more of these to overturn anything substantial,” Cavalli said.
But hundreds of Trump supporters met outside the State capitol to protect the results. They believe there’s widespread voter fraud despite any evidence of that from state officials.
The chairman of the Georgia Republican Party told Channel 2′s Justin Gray that he remains skeptical of the audit. The Trump campaign can still ask for another recount of their own after state officials certify the results.
Sterling said no one has formally made that request yet.
“I’m hoping that we won’t have to put the counters through that level of work. But if that request comes through as a lawful request, it is an understandable request on some levels,” he said.
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