Live updates: Biden continues to cut Trump’s lead in Georgia as final ballots counted
Editor’s note: McClatchy reporters will provide live updates on Georgia’s vote counting process and other election news in the state throughout the day.
Biden within almost 1,700 votes of Trump in Georgia
Joe Biden trails Donald Trump by 1,709 votes as of 1 a.m., according to data from the New York Times. The Secretary of State’s office has the margin at 1,775 as of 11 p.m.
Clayton County was slowly updating ballot counts, as of 1 a.m., but those numbers were not immediately reflected in the Secretary of State’s total. It’s currently unclear why the website is not updating.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office reported that 14,097 ballots still needed to be counted in a 10:35 p.m. update.
There are also up to 9,000 military and overseas statewide ballots that would have to arrive by tomorrow to be counted, as well as an unknown number of provisional ballots. Those ballots would need to have been postmarked by Election Day.
Biden is on the cusp of victory, just six electoral votes shy of the necessary 270, according to the Associated Press. But vote counting in several key states is ongoing. The AP has Biden leading in Nevada, but down in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
If Biden won Georgia, he’d be the first Democrat to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Donald Trump Jr. to hold press conference in Atlanta
Donald Trump Jr. plans to have a 6 p.m. press conference at the Georgia Republican Party headquarters in Atlanta.
Rep. Doug Collins, Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones and Georgia Republican National Committeewoman Ginger Howard are scheduled to be at the event, according to a news release.
Georgia election official gives update on counting
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s statewide voting system implementation manager, said the state has 47,277 ballots left to be counted, but that number is changing every second.
In a 3 p.m. press conference, Sterling said the office “can’t know how long the process will take.”
“We hope to have clarity on the outcomes of these elections as soon as possible,” he said. “However, when you have so many important elections in the state being so close, ‘Done,’ is a very relative term at this point. We’re trying to get all the legal votes counted accurately, so we get the right results and make sure that everybody’s vote is reflected properly.”
Here is the current county breakdown of absentee ballots left to be counted:
Chatham County: 17,157
Clayton County: 6,026
Cobb County: 700
Floyd County: 682
Forsyth County: 4,713
Fulton County: 7,305
Gwinnett County: 4,800
Harris County: 3,641
Laurens County: 1,797
Taylor County: 456
The counties are working to get the remaining ballots scanned and counted, Sterling said.
Included in that 47,277 ballot count are 17,529 military ballots that have been accepted in the counties, Sterling said. Military ballots that are postmarked by Election Day can be accepted until Friday.
The state has 8,899 military ballots still out that could potentially be delivered tomorrow. However there is no way to know how many will arrive by deadline, Sterling said.
Fulton County has 3,900 provisionals, and Sterling said he did not know the coding on those ballots, which would determine if additional actions were required by the voter or if those ballots are automatically accepted.
“These close elections require us to be diligent and make sure we do everything right,” Sterling said.
Counties have to certify their elections by Nov. 13. The state has to certify the election by Nov. 20.
State election officials plan second press conference
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office plans to hold a press conference at the state capitol Thursday afternoon to give another update on ballot counting.
The press conference will stream live at 3 p.m., according to a news release.
Georgia has 47,863 outstanding ballots to be counted as of 2:15 p.m., according to a news release. The Georgia Secretary of State website has Donald Trump leading Joe Biden by 13,220 votes as of 2:30 p.m.
Watch election officials speak at the 3 p.m. press conference below. If the video here isn’t working for you, click here.
Perdue and Ossoff might be headed to a runoff
Incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue has fallen below 50% of the vote against Democrat challenger Jon Ossoff, leading both campaigns to address the possibility of a January runoff election.
Georgia’s two Senate elections could determine the Senate’s balance of power. The Associated Press reports both parties are tied, 48-48 with 4 seats undetermined.
Chatham County vote lawsuit dismissed
Chatham County Superior Court Judge Bass has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Georgia Republican Party alleging that Chatham County elections officials improperly counted absentee ballots received after the state’s deadline.
The Current, a Coastal Georgia news outlet, was the first to report the lawsuit’s dismissal.
The lawsuit was among a handful filed by the Trump campaign in states with closes races and where ballots were still being counted Wednesday night. The suit addressed the county’s storage of absentee ballots, and a poll watcher claimed he saw a poll worker handling ballots incorrectly.
Bass dismissed the suit after Chatham County Board of Registrars and Board of Election officials presented detailed evidence for the storage, review of flagged ballots and tabulation of absentee ballots.
State election officials update nation on vote counting efforts
Georgia’s Secretary of State’s office held a news conference at the state capitol Thursday morning to discuss the election results and the work election officials are doing to count the outstanding absentee ballots.
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s statewide voting system implementation manager, spoke at the news conference because he said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was in meetings. Just over 60,000 absentee ballots are left to be counted, he said.
“We’re working to get these done today if possible,” he said. “Fast is great, and we appreciate fast. We more appreciate accuracy.”
The main cause of the delay, at this moment, is counting the number of absentee ballots turned in on Election Day, Sterling said.
Some ballots have to be adjudicated, meaning an election official has to look at the ballot and determine why the scanner flagged the ballot. Often, ballots are flagged if a voter didn’t fully fill in the circle for the candidate they selected or made a stray mark somewhere on the ballot. In situations where the election official cannot determine the will of the voter, the ballot will have to be cured.
Curing means to allow voters to fix a mistake on their absentee ballot. Absentee ballots could be rejected due to mistakes, such as the ballot not being properly signed. In Georgia, county election officials will notify a voter than their ballot was initially rejected and provide them with an opportunity to fix the mistake. Contact your county registrar to get more information and find out what your options are.
Here are the remaining ballots in different counties:
- Bryan County: 3,027
- Burke County: 494
- Chatham County: 17,157
- Clayton County: 7,408
- Cobb County: Approximately 700
- Floyd County: 682
- Forsyth County: 4,713
- Fulton County: 11,200
- Gwinnett County: 7,300
- Harris County: 3,641
- Laurens County: 1,797
- Putnam County: 1,552
- Taylor County: 456
Some delays in getting vote counts updated are simply because the counties forget to press the button to send the results to the state level, Sterling said.
“We’re working with the counties to make sure that they have properly put their stuff into their system and uploaded. As, like many of y’all, during this election cycle, they are tired. Sometimes they’re going to forget to press the upload button,” Sterling said.
County election officials have until Nov. 13 to certify the election, but Raffensperger said he wants counties to finish counting absentee ballots quickly in order for close races to be decided, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.
Several steps have been taken to secure the vote, Sterling said. Absentee ballot drop boxes, which had surveillance cameras monitoring them, were locked at 7 p.m. on Election Day, and a state monitor has been observing Fulton County for all counts, according to a news release from the Secretary of State’s office. A pre-certification audit will also be conducted in order to assure votes were counted accurately.
“These are 159 election directors and employees who were here to do the job of protecting democracy. When you go to talk to them, they think about that. They think about the votes of every person in this room and around the country. These people are not involved in voter fraud. These people are not involved in voter suppression,” Sterling said.
Thousands of ballots left to count
More than 61,000 ballots remain uncounted in Georgia as of 9:15 a.m. as the dwindling gap between incumbent President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden sits at about 18,000 votes.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office provided the updated ballot number Thursday morning as counting in several Georgia counties continued.
Many of the outstanding ballots in Georgia are from Democratic-leaning areas. More than 46% of the ballots are from Fulton and Chatham counties, according to data the Secretary of State’s Office provided to Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said most of the counting could be done within the next several hours. He is set to hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m. where an updated vote count is expected to be given.
In addition to the presidential race, incumbent U.S. Sen. David Perdue and Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff are separated by about 115,000 votes. The race has not been called and could move to a January runoff if neither person tops the 50% threshold.
“We’re looking at by lunchtime, having most of this knocked out,” Raffensperger told Atlanta’s WSB radio.
Both Biden and Trump made several appearances in Georgia during the final month of the election and polling before election day showed the two were virtually tied.
A Democratic presidential candidate has not carried Georgia since Bill Clinton won the state in 1992.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 10:00 AM.