Georgia Elections Official: There Will be Recount in Georgia With Margin So Small

By Staff, Agencies

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said Friday morning the state would have a recount because of the slim election margin.

“Right now, Georgia remains too close to call,” he said. “There will be a recount.”

Under Georgia state law, candidates can request a recount if the margin of victory is less than 0.5%. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden gained a small lead over President Donald Trump early Friday morning. About 1,600 votes separate the two candidates.

“We are literally looking at a margin of less than a large high school,” said Georgia’s voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterling.

The state had about 4,169 votes left to count, according to Sterling. A recount could take until the end of the month, he noted. The state pays for recounts in Georgia.

Raffensperger also added that “the focus for our office and county election officials, for now, remains on making sure that every legal vote is counted and reported accurately.” But Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system implementation manager, told reporters that, to be clear, there was no evidence of the fraud being alleged by the Trump campaign, saying, “We’re not seeing any widespread irregularities.”

Under Georgia law, a candidate can request a recount if the margin is 0.5 percent or less of total votes cast, but the request must be made within two days of the certification of the election results. More than 4.9 million votes have been cast in Georgia so far, with roughly 4,000 votes remaining to be counted, not including what could be as many as 8,900 overseas, military, and provisional ballots.

Importantly, the Trump campaign has not yet requested a recount in Georgia but has already indicated it will request a recount in Wisconsin, another state that allows candidates to request one if the margin is narrow enough.

If the Trump campaign were to request a recount in Georgia as well, the request must be made within two days of the certification of the election results – in Georgia’s case, that would be November 17.

However, based on previous Georgia recounts in state-level races, the total vote numbers are unlikely to change significantly. A 2004 Georgia judicial race in which the candidates were separated by fewer than 400 votes went to a recount, but the margin of victory only changed by 15 votes. And in 2017, a recount took place in the Atlanta mayoral race between Mary Norwood and Keisha Lance Bottoms, but Norwood did not gain any additional votes and Bottoms remained the victor.

It’s important to note that Georgia will not decide the presidency: With a win in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden already has 273 electoral votes, more than the 270 required to win the election.