Secretary of State Brad Raffenserger has ordered a hand recount of Georgia’s presidential election. (Photo by Beau Evans)
In an unprecedented move, Georgia will undertake a hand recount of the nearly 5 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election with roughly 14,000 votes separating President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday.
Several state and local runoff elections including a seat on the Public Service Commission will also be rescheduled from Dec. 1 to Jan. 5 for election workers to better prepare for another wave of voters, Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger formally called for the hand recount as part of a regular audit of the election results, which were poised to be done via an electronic sampling of ballots before Raffensperger revised the process under emergency powers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, all 159 county elections boards in Georgia will have until the certification deadline of Nov. 20 to count by hand every in-person, mail-in and provisional ballot cast in last week’s election, Raffensperger said at a news conference Wednesday.
A recount of this magnitude has not been conducted before in Georgia and follows record turnout in the Nov. 3 general election. Raffensperger said the hand count should instill confidence in the final election results amid growing – and unproven – accusations of voter fraud.
“We understand the significance of this for not just Georgia but for every single American,” Raffensperger said. “At the end of the day, when we do a hand count, then we can answer the question of exactly what was the final margin in this race.”
Biden led Trump by 14,108 votes in Georgia as of Wednesday afternoon, drawing intense focus to a state that a Democratic presidential nominee has not won since 1992 and which is set for two runoff elections on Jan. 5 that could decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.
Democratic leaders in Georgia have dismissed claims of voter fraud and urged Trump to begin a smooth transition of power to Biden, who was declared winner of the election by a host of major news outlets analyzing the vote tallies on Saturday. No outlets have called the race in Georgia so far.
The voting rights group Fair Fight, founded by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, shortly after Raffensperger’s announcement Wednesday said that Trump “cannot overturn the will of Georgia voters.”
“Donald Trump is delaying the inevitable,” the group said on Twitter. “He lost, and he knows it.”
Republican allies of Trump hailed Raffensperger’s decision Wednesday, calling it a good first step in a push to weed out whether any ineligible ballots were cast. The president and his supporters have cried foul on the election results over the past week, alleging voter fraud without hard evidence in close-race states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, who is leading the Trump campaign’s recount activities in Georgia, said in a conference call Wednesday his team is looking at allegations of ballot harvesting and improperly signed ballots, as well as some alleged instances of dead Georgians voting.
“This is a victory for integrity,” Collins said of the recount. “This is a victory for transparency.”
Raffensperger and his staff have not discovered any evidence of substantial ballot-casting fraud yet but have pledged to investigate credible allegations that may arise.
“Anecdotes and stories don’t work,” Raffensperger said Wednesday. “We need something we can actually investigate.”
U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff urges support for the Affordable Care Act at a rally outside the State Capitol in Atlanta on Nov. 10, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia health-care advocates and Democratic leaders including U.S. Senate nominee Jon Ossoff rallied Tuesday to support the Affordable Care Act as the U.S. Supreme Court took up a Republican-backed lawsuit aimed at striking down the law.
The lawsuit, which Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has joined as a plaintiff, seeks to have the 2010 health-care law overturned on grounds it can no longer require people to have insurance through the so-called individual mandate, which Congress watered down in 2017 by repealing a tax tied to coverage.
Ossoff, an investigative journalist, has made backing the law and its protections for persons with pre-existing health conditions a central part of his campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who has several times voted against the law.
Ossoff and Georgia Democrats including Rev. Raphael Warnock, who is competing for the state’s other Senate seat against Sen. Kelly Loeffler, have framed Republicans’ support for the lawsuit as an attempt to strip health care from millions of Georgians in the middle of a viral pandemic.
At a rally outside the Georgia Capitol building in Atlanta Tuesday, Ossoff called Perdue’s stance on the health-care bill “a travesty” and signaled he plans to continue hammering the senator on health-care issues ahead of the closely-watched Jan. 5 runoff.
“This is not a matter of partisan politics,” Ossoff said. “This is a matter of the public interest.”
Perdue, a former corporate executive seeking a second six-year term in the Senate, has previously dismissed claims he does not support insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions, arguing he has backed legislation to expand those protections. He argues the law drove up health-care costs and limited insurance options.
On Tuesday, Perdue’s campaign argued Ossoff favors a “socialized health-care plan” that could increase costs and reduce local hospitals’ workforces and facilities.
“Senator Perdue always has and always will support protecting health care for those with pre-existing conditions, period,” said the campaign’s communication’s director, John Burke.
Both Perdue and Loeffler voted against a Democrat-sponsored bill last month that would prohibit the U.S. Department of Justice from arguing against the health-care law in court.
Carr has echoed other Republican attorneys general and officials in calling the health-care law passed during former President Barack Obama’s administration an “overt form of federal overreach” that should be scrapped.
The law’s supporters argue that while not perfect, it provides essential protections for pre-existing conditions and coverage for services like vaccines that will become crucial in the coming months as COVID-19 vaccines are approved and made widely available.
“Every Georgian, whether they know it or not, benefits from the standards and protections that have been put in place by the Affordable Care Act,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of the nonprofit Georgians for a Healthy Future.
A ruling by the high court may not arrive for several months.
Meanwhile, the Perdue-Ossoff and Loeffler-Warnock runoff races have put Georgia in the national political spotlight with control of the U.S. Senate potentially hanging in the balance. Big campaign donations and high-profile backers from both parties are expected to blanket the state before Jan. 5.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock in the runoffs would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Ossoff and Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, have sought to fix health care and insurance coverage as the campaign’s top issues, while Perdue and Loeffler have focused on casting their Democratic opponents’ priorities and backgrounds as too extreme for Georgia.
Eager to paint their opponents as too cozy with socialism, Perdue has noted a Hong Kong media company’s past purchase of one of Ossoff’s films and Loeffler on Tuesday highlighted a New York church where Warnock worked as a junior staff member that hosted Cuba’s Fidel Castro in 1995.
Perdue and Loeffler stirred controversy this week in pressing for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to resign following the Nov. 3 presidential election as state election officials continue brushing aside unproven claims of ballot fraud made by President Donald Trump.
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoff is Dec. 7.
U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler (left) and David Perdue (right), both Republicans from Georgia, are campaigning to hold their seats in runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans in tight runoff races to hold their seats, called on Georgia’s Republican secretary of state Monday to resign as state election officials continued brushing aside unproven claims of ballot fraud.
The joint call from Perdue and Loeffler came shortly after the top elections manager in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office dismissed a string of theories on ballot harvesting and computer glitches that President Donald Trump’s allies floated recently to sow doubt in Georgia’s election results.
As of Monday afternoon, President-elect Joe Biden maintained a lead over Trump in Georgia of about 10,600 votes, leaving the state on the cusp of flipping to a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time since 1992. State officials have until Nov. 20 to certify the election results and a recount is also likely.
In a joint statement, Perdue and Loeffler called Raffensperger’s management of the election “an embarrassment” that lacked “transparency and uniformity in the counting process.” Without citing any evidence of fraud or improper ballot counting, the two senators pressed Raffensperger to resign.
“We believe when there are failures, they need to be called out – even when it’s in your own party,” Perdue and Loeffler’s statement read. “There have been too many failures in Georgia elections this year and the most recent election has shined a national light on the problems.”
In a long response statement, Raffensperger said he understood “emotions are running high” but that Georgia’s elections had run smoothly despite slow results and issues in some counties. He called the senators’ claims on transparency “laughable” and said if any illegal votes were found in the coming weeks, they would not likely change the election results.
“As a Republican, I am concerned about Republicans keeping the U.S. Senate,” Raffensperger said. “I recommend that Senators Loeffler and Perdue state focusing on that.”
Earlier on Monday, the state’s election system manager, Gabriel Sterling, during a news conference debunked claims of ballot harvesting or ballot tampering with specific explanations for how some temporary counting discrepancies resulted from human error, not software glitches or partisan sabotage.
Sterling, who is a Republican, has held multiple news conferences – often twice a day – since the Nov. 3 election to update the public on the ballot-counting process in Georgia and to outline details of issues seen in some counties, which he said were expected in a high-turnout election and quickly fixed.
“The facts are the facts, regardless of outcomes,” Sterling said Monday. “In Georgia, we had an actual, accurate outcome.”
Sterling acknowledged that investigators may uncover double-votes or other illegally cast ballots in the coming days as an audit of the results kicks off Wednesday – though it’s unlikely investigators would turn up enough improper ballots for Trump to bridge Biden’s lead, he said.
“Our job is to get it right for the voters and the people of Georgia, and for the people of the United States, to make sure the outcomes of this election are correct and trustworthy,” Sterling said. “And at the end of the day, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, no matter which candidate you supported, you can have trust and believe in the outcome of these things.”
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, also said Monday morning on CNN that Georgia officials “have not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet” regarding voter fraud or improper ballot counting.
The runoff races between Perdue and Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff, and between Loeffler and Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, have already thrust Georgia into the national political spotlight with control of the U.S. Senate potentially hanging in the balance.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock in the Jan. 5 runoffs would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Republican and Democratic leaders across the country are poised to pull out all the stops in Georgia with huge campaign donations and high-profile backers expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
While Democrats aim to build on momentum that appears to have swung the state for Biden, many Republican leaders have homed in on the integrity of the election to cast doubt on the overall ballot-counting process in Georgia and other states with tight races.
Notably, outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins has signed on to lead the Trump campaign’s push for a recount, which can legally be requested since the vote margin between Trump and Biden in Georgia stands at less than 0.5%.
Collins, who finished third and out of the running for the January runoff against Loeffler, said in a statement Monday he feels “confident” his team will discover ballot harvesting and other issues in Georgia’s election but did not provide any evidence for why he feels that way.
Trump also took to Twitter shortly after Perdue and Loeffler’s joint statement Monday afternoon to claim he will win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, despite the fact he is losing in the state.
Two runoff races for U.S. Senate will be held in Georgia following close votes on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
All eyes are on Georgia as two potentially power-shifting U.S. Senate runoff races plowed on Monday and state election officials moved to tamp down unproven claims of ballot fraud from allies of President Donald Trump.
The runoff races between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff, and between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, are already attracting large donations and big-name backers ahead of a Jan. 5 runoff election.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of Congress and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
With millions of dollars already in the bank, Ossoff and Warnock look to benefit from a flood of donations pouring into their campaigns and the fundraising group Fair Fight led by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which raised $6 million for the two Democratic campaigns over the weekend.
“Together, we have changed the course of our state for the better,” Abrams said on social media Monday. “But our work is not done.”
Also over the weekend, former U.S. presidential candidate and New York resident Andrew Yang announced he and his wife plan on moving to Georgia in order to help drum up Democratic turnout for the Ossoff and Warnock campaigns.
Despite the excitement, Democrats have a tough fight ahead to flip Georgia’s Senate seats. Biden’s lead over Trump remained a razor-thin roughly 10,600 votes Monday afternoon as both state and national Republicans rushed to bolster Perdue and Loeffler’s campaigns and galvanize Republican voter support.
National Republican leaders have latched onto comments Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made shortly after news outlets called the presidency for Biden on Saturday, saying: “Now we take Georgia, then we change America.”
Echoing other Republican leaders, Perdue and Loeffler have used Schumer’s comments to cast Georgia as the last line of resistance against Democratic priorities on health care, criminal justice reform and climate change initiatives, which Republicans have called too radical.
On Monday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced he plans to join Perdue and Loeffler for a joint rally in Cobb County this week, marking the first of what will likely be many high-profile political figures arriving in Georgia to muster support for the two competing teams of Senate contenders.
“Georgia is the firewall against the radical agenda of the far left,” Rubio said on social media Sunday.
The tug-of-war over Georgia’s Senate seats comes as many Republican leaders continue lobbing accusations – so far without evidence – of improper ballot counting in Georgia and other states with tight races that flipped for Biden.
In Georgia, outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins has signed on to lead the Trump campaign’s push for a recount, which can legally be requested since the vote margin between Trump and Biden stands at less than 0.5%.
Collins, who finished third and out of the running for the January runoff against Loeffler, said in a statement announcing his new position that he feels “confident we will find evidence of improperly harvested ballots and other irregularities” during the recount.
Georgia election officials – including some Republicans – have rejected claims any recount or discovery of improperly cast ballots could sway the election as officials work to certify results and prepare for a recount in the coming weeks.
Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system manager, dismissed claims of ballot harvesting or ballot-tampering at a news conference Monday, noting a handful of counties including Fulton, Gwinnett and Spalding did see temporary counting discrepancies but that those have since been fixed.
“The facts are the facts, regardless of the outcome,” said Sterling, who is a Republican. “In Georgia, we had an actual, accurate outcome.”
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, also said Monday morning on CNN that Georgia officials “have not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet” regarding voter fraud or improper ballot counting.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel alleges election irregularities in Buckhead on Nov. 6, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Republican leaders in Georgia delivered different responses Friday to President Donald Trump’s claims of voting irregularities and attacks on the state’s election integrity as his lead in the Peach State slipped away to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Charged by the president with overseeing “an election apparatus run by Democrats,” Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Georgia House Speaker David Ralston – all Republicans – called for investigations into any voter-fraud allegations.
They did not outline any specific allegations in a brief joint statement Friday and avoided directly addressing Trump’s attacks on Georgia’s election system while also throwing support to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican elections chief.
“We trust that our secretary of state will ensure that the law is followed as written and that Georgia’s election result includes all legally-cast ballots – and only legally-cast ballots,” the statement read. “We will continue to follow this situation to ensure a fair and transparent process.”
Meanwhile, backed by a Trump-painted bus in a Buckhead parking lot, the Georgia Republican Party convened supporters to hear impassioned and conspiracy-tinged speeches by several GOP leaders, including Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
McDaniel said her organization plans to send legal teams into four states with tight races including Georgia to investigate alleged voting irregularities, but she and other speakers divulged few specifics. She mentioned one issue involving an unnamed “whistleblower” who allegedly was “told to back-date ballots” in Michigan.
McDaniel declined to describe more specific allegations when pressed by reporters, saying lawyers advised her to keep mum for now.
“We are not going to jump the gun, but they are serious,” McDaniel said of the unspecified allegations.
McDaniel was joined at the podium by former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, Trump’s agriculture secretary; outgoing state Rep. Vernon Jones; and attorney Lin Wood, who intentionally mispronounced Democratic vice presidential nominee Kalama Harris’ name as “Cabala” Harris during his remarks.
Biden, the former vice president, pulled ahead of Trump in Georgia early Friday morning and held a razor-thin advantage of around 4,000 votes late Friday with roughly 14,200 provisional and 8,400 military and overseas ballots left to be counted.
Raffensperger said Friday the presidential race in Georgia will likely require a recount.
President Donald Trump slammed Georgia’s election system in a speech at the White House on Nov. 5, 2020. (White House video)
A handful of Republican statewide officeholders rushed to President Donald Trump’s defense Thursday night as he lashed out against Georgia’s election system just before his lead over Democratic challenger Joe Biden evaporated overnight in the Peach State.
In a prime-time televised speech Thursday, Trump accused Georgia election officials of improperly counting mail-in votes and of having “an election apparatus run by Democrats,” even though both the governor and the state’s election chief are Republicans.
The Republican president, who has called for halting ballot counts in some tight-race states, also made unfounded claims Georgia election officials were accepting ballots after the 7 p.m. Election Day deadline. Similar allegations were made in a Trump campaign lawsuit that a Chatham County judge tossed Thursday.
Trump delivered his speech just as his lead over Biden in Georgia shrunk to less than 4,000 votes. Hours later on Friday, the former vice president and Democratic nominee pulled ahead in the state with a few thousand ballots still left to be counted.
Biden’s lead over Trump in Georgia stood at 1,097 votes as of 10 a.m. Thursday morning, according to official state elections data.
Of Georgia’s eight currently seated Republican Congress members, two immediately echoed the president’s attitude Thursday night by slamming the state’s election system in a bid to cast doubt on the election’s integrity and back Trump’s intent to fight mail-in ballot counting in court.
U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, whose district stretches from east of Atlanta to suburban Augusta, unloaded on Georgia officials’ handling of the election minutes after Trump’s speech ended. In a Twitter post, Hice called their performance “embarrassing” and made unfounded claims that “partisan ballots keep appearing” in Georgia.
Shortly after, outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins appeared at a Trump campaign rally in Atlanta alongside the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., where the four-term Gainesville congressman accused an unnamed local media outlet of refusing to report on ballots being counted at State Farm Arena after observers were forced to leave due to a burst water pipe.
“Who’s in cahoots with who?” said Collins, who finished third and out of the running for a January runoff earlier this week in the crowded race for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial firebrand Republican who won a Northwest Georgia congressional seat on Tuesday, accused Democratic leaders of aiming to “steal” the election by “trying to count ballots that are coming in after the election.”
She also described Republicans who would not support Trump’s push to curb ballot counting in certain states as “cowards” and “weak-kneed.”
The state’s two Republican U.S. Senators, Loeffler and David Perdue, declined Thursday night to directly comment in response to Trump’s statements on Georgia’s election. Both staunch supporters of Trump, Perdue and Loeffler pointed to earlier comments Thursday they made calling for all “legal” and “lawful” votes to be counted.
Loeffler, however, said on Twitter she donated to a Trump campaign fundraising platform aimed at raising money to “protect the results” of the election.
Georgia’s Republican U.S. Reps. Drew Ferguson, Austin Scott, Barry Loudermilk, Rob Woodall, Rick Allen and Buddy Carter had not directly addressed the president’s election comments as of Friday morning. On social media, some of them echoed Loeffler and Perdue in calling for counting “legal” votes.
Also avoiding direct comment were Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, a staunch Trump supporter, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican whose office oversees activities of the state’s 159 county elections boards and is responsible for providing local precincts with voting machines.
In several updates since Tuesday, Raffensperger has stressed Georgia’s election system has “strong security protocols.” His top deputy, Jordan Fuchs, said Friday morning state and local election workers were focused on delivering “real, accurate election results” with the presidential race so close.
“Election workers around the state are working with integrity to ensure every legal ballot is counted,” Fuchs said.
Likewise, the state’s voting systems manager, Gabriel Sterling, defended the elections’ handling by state and county officials on behalf of Raffensperger’s office Thursday, repeatedly stressing the need for accuracy over speed in the ongoing tabulation of ballots.
“In this state, in particular, we take security very seriously,” Sterling said Thursday. “I can speak for the people on Secretary Raffensperger’s staff [and] the elections directors from around the state — they’re going to get it right.”
