The hand recount of nearly five million ballots has begun in Georgia.
The recount was ordered by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after President-elect Joe Biden’s narrow victory over President Donald Trump in Georgia.
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Election workers across the state have begun the historic recount and will most likely have to work overtime to get the job done.
The deadline for all 159 counties to get their recounts to the secretary’s office is next Wednesday, Nov. 18th.
“This is very important to understand because right now there’s a swath of voters in this state and around the country that will say ‘those machines cheat,’ those machines ‘miscounted,’ ‘that guy lost,’” said Georgia Voter System Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling.
Election workers trained Thursday on how to tally the votes.
While most counties have begun their counting Friday, DeKalb County will begin on Saturday because election officials need more time to prepare.
“And so we want to make sure everything is in place, so I do not suggest us starting at 9 a.m. I think I’ll keep our start time at 7 a.m. on Saturday. It allows us to get everything in place,” DeKalb Elections Supervisor Erica Hamilton said.
Fulton County will also start their counting on Saturday morning.
“I have no doubt we will be successful,” said Fulton County Commission chairman Robb Pitts. “I’m comfortable we will be able to do it. It is just still sinking in. It was a surprise when it came down from the Secretary of State.”
On Wednesday, Raffensperger made the surprise announcement that he was ordering a hand recount of the presidential race in Georgia. A number of Republicans have demanded a hand recount, not one by machine.
In Thursday’s news conference, Sterling defended the plan to vote by hand, saying that if President Donald Trump had the ballot lead, they would be doing the exact same thing.
“The press has mischaracterized this as caving to Trump and their campaign,” Sterling said. “That can’t be further from the truth. Even before the Trump campaign was talking about the possibility for a recount or recanvassing, we knew there was a specific purpose for an audit in the law.”
>>Return here throughout the day and evening for a live stream of local vote updates.
As of Thursday morning, President-elect Joe Biden was ahead of President Donald Trump by more than 14,000 votes in Georgia.
Raffensperger said because that margin is so slim, it was important to make sure to audit the vote.
And when you look at the national significance of the races we had, this is a race that has the most national significance," Raffensperger said.
Sterling said observers from each party will be at the recounts, and they will be open to the public. Human error is inevitable, according to state officials, but the results should show there is no widespread voter fraud that should lead anyone to question the results.
“And let me be perfectly clear: If this were 14,000 votes the other way, we would be doing the exact same thing,” Sterling said.
Sterling acknowledged that a swath of voters will accuse the machines of cheating or miscounting.
“Understand when you are really emotionally tied to the outcome, anything you see that feeds your belief is believed by you,” Sterling said.
Sterling also addressed a set of theories floating around about how Georgians voted, particularly the 24,000 people who decided to skip the presidential election on their ballots.
“That is not surprising, in fact, that’s a low percent,” Sterling said. “Lower than we anticipated.... In Fulton County, there were 9,000 more votes for Sen. Perdue than there were for the president. So all of these will even out over the state. If you look individually, there’s nothing odd or very ambiguous about that.”
Fair Fight Action tweeted in response to the recount, “Georgia voters decided. Donald Trump cannot overturn the will of Georgia voters.”
WSB experts joined Atlanta’s Morning News on Monday, Nov. 9th, to weigh in on what’s next in the election cycle. Listen to the roundtable, hosted by WSB’s Scott Slade, below.
>>Click HERE for live Election 2020 results and more on the latest developments.
Washington Insider Jamie Dupree is also tracking the latest developments on 95.5 WSB and Twitter.
You’ve seen political ads for the U.S Senate races for months. But get ready to see more of them because a lot of money is being pumped into the two runoffs in Georgia.
Raffensperger announced Wednesday that several state runoff races scheduled for Dec. 1 have been moved to Jan. 5, 2020.
The Secretary of State said in a news conference that five state and local runoffs will be moved to coincide with the crucial federal Senate runoff races between Kelly Loeffler and Raphael Warnock and David Perdue and Jon Ossoff.
Raffensperger said he had the power to move the runoffs due to the ongoing health emergency.
Experts predict the runoffs in Georgia could raise up to $200 million in just eight weeks. For comparison, candidates in a South Carolina Senate race raised more than $160 million over an entire year.
While the Senate seats haven’t been decided, Georgia elected four new members and 10 incumbents to the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday night.
The 7th District, 9th District and 14th District will have new representatives after Rep. Rob Woodall, Rep. Doug Collins and Rep. Tom Graves did not run for re-election.
In the 5th District, Democrat Nikema Williams will succeed her mentor Rep. John Lewis. Williams was selected to run for Lewis' seat, who won the June primary but died in July following a battle with cancer.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who gained national attention for being QAnon follower and has made several controversial comments in her run for Congress, won Georgia’s 14th District. She won the seat previously held by Rep. Tom Graves, who retired this year.
Republican Andrew Clyde defeated Democrat Devin Pandy in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District previously held by Collins. Collins conceded in the U.S. Senate race, which will come down to Kelly Loeffler and Raphael Warnock.
Carolyn Bordeaux, who ran for Georgia’s 7th District in 2018, claimed victory in the race this year over Republican Rich McCormick. The race has not been officially called and McCormick has not conceded.
U.S Rep. Lucy McBath won her re-election to the Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in a closely-watched rematch with Republican Karen Handel.
The following incumbents also won re-election for the remaining districts: Buddy Carter, Sanford Bishop, Drew Ferguson, Hank Johnson, Austin Scott, Jody Hice, Barry Loudermilk, Rick Allen and David Scott.
>>Read more here.
Governor Brian Kemp and a handful of candidates for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats joined 95.5 WSB live on Election Day to encourage those headed out to the polls.
>>In case you missed it, you can listen the audio of each of their hits with Atlanta’s Morning News host Scott Slade below.
Americans voted in the 2020 election in record numbers by absentee and mail-in ballots. With millions of ballots coming into election offices across the country, state officials were faced with the task of opening, processing and counting those votes.
States process ballots in preparation in different ways depending on the laws of the state. Some election officials were allowed to open the ballot, unfold it and get ready to verify and count it prior to election day.
>>Click HERE for more on what states are permitted to do when it comes to processing then counting absentee and mail-in ballots.
Keep in mind, a person running for president of the United States does not win the election with a majority of the votes cast on Election Day. Instead, he or she wins the presidency by winning at least 270 Electoral College votes.
The Electoral College is not a building, but a process that counts votes in states to assign “electors” to elect a U.S. president.
>>Electoral College: How does it work; what happens if there is a tie?
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. The number of electors from each state equals the number of members in that state’s Congressional delegation – one for each House of Representatives member and one for each senator.
Currently, that number is 535, the Congressional delegations plus three delegates from the District of Columbia.
In the list below, you can see the states that have the most votes and the ones candidates place the most emphasis on and why some states get more visits by candidates than others.
Here’s a ranking of states based on the number of electoral votes:
· California — 55
· Texas — 38
· Florida — 29
· New York — 29
· Illinois — 20
· Pennsylvania — 20
· Ohio — 18
· Georgia — 16
· Michigan — 16
· North Carolina — 15
· New Jersey — 14
· Virginia — 13
· Washington — 12
· Arizona — 11
· Indiana — 11
· Massachusetts — 11
· Tennessee — 11
· Maryland — 10
· Minnesota — 10
· Missouri — 10
· Wisconsin — 10
· Alabama — 9
· Colorado — 9
· South Carolina — 9
· Kentucky — 8
· Louisiana — 8
· Connecticut — 7
· Oklahoma — 7
· Oregon — 7
· Arkansas — 6
· Iowa — 6
· Kansas — 6
· Mississippi — 6
· Nevada — 6
· Utah — 6
· Nebraska5
· New Mexico — 5
· West Virginia — 5
· Hawaii — 4
· Idaho — 4
· Maine — 4
· New Hampshire — 4
· Rhode Island — 4
· Alaska — 3
· Delaware — 3
· Montana — 3
· North Dakota — 3
· South Dakota — 3
· Vermont — 3
· Wyoming — 3
Ultimately, electing a president is a process that is made up of several steps that happen after Election Day. From canvassing and certifying votes to casting those votes during Electoral College proceedings, a series of events must take place in order for a person to officially be elected president of the United States.
>>Election 2020 timeline: What happens after Election Day?
Cox Media Group
