Georgia Audit Confirms That Joe Biden Won State Over Donald Trump
A hand recount of ballots in Georgia affirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the state over Donald Trump, state officials announced Thursday, even as Trump continues to press unfounded claims of voter fraud.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said that the “historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results.”
The audit showed that Biden won the state by 12,284 votes, compared to 12,780 before the recount. Trump gained 486 votes in the new count.
The audit showed that the highest error rate in any county recount was 0.73%. Most counties reported no change in their tally, and the majority of remaining counties had changes of fewer than 10 ballots. The most significant change was found in some counties that had not uploaded all of their memory cards, which was blamed on human error, but it did not change the outcome.
In a long press conference earlier Thursday, Trump’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, made a series of claims of election fraud, even though they produced little evidence and bandied about a series of wild conspiracy theories. Fox News was the only major cable news network to carry the press conference live, as CNN and MSNBC stuck to regular programming.
Raffensperger indicated that the Georgia results will be certified on Friday. At the press conference, Giuliani said that the Trump campaign planned to file a new lawsuit in the state. The Trump campaign has until Tuesday to request another recount.
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