Georgia’s hand recount was not influenced by Trump campaign, election official says
A Georgia election official again denied that the decision to retally the state’s nearly five million presidential votes by hand was influenced by requests from Donald Trump’s campaign.
Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system implementation manager, told reporters Thursday afternoon that any such suggestions were untrue. The retally was triggered by the state’s election audit laws.
Under Georgia law, the audit requires a by-hand inspection of random samples of official ballots and uses statistical sampling techniques to confirm the results of the election. The risk-limiting audit will serve as a full retally in this situation because of the large number of ballots cast and the narrow margin between the two candidates, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Picking the race to recount
The law does not state which race from the election cycle has to be audited. The only other race that would have been more easily audited was the U.S. Senate special election. However, Sterling said, choosing the Senate race might have undermined the public’s confidence in the presidential results.
“Even before the Trump campaign was talking about the possibility of a recount, we knew there was a specific purpose for an audit in the law, and that specific purpose was to instill confidence in the outcome of that election,” Sterling said. “If it was 14,000 votes (in Trump’s favor), we would be doing the exact same thing.”
As of Thursday afternoon, President-elect Joe Biden leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes as 108 of Georgia’s 159 counties have certified their election results.
Auditing begins Friday
The audit will take place at the county level and county election officials began training Thursday morning. The auditing begins Friday morning and continues through Wednesday evening. It is open to the public and there will be observers from both parties. Counties will cover the cost of the audit, but state officials are looking for ways to provide federal money to help offset costs, Sterling said.
Counties have until Friday to certify election results and the state’s deadline is Nov. 20. State officials are confident they will meet the deadline. Procedures and “sanity checks” are in place to make sure the process runs properly.
Sterling did not confirm reports that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was quarantining following his wife’s positive COVID-19 test. However, Sterling said something like that wouldn’t slow the state’s audit efforts.
The final tally may change slightly, but election officials have previously said it’s unlikely it would lead to a Trump win in Georgia.
“Human beings are the most flawed part of this process,” he said. “I guarantee you the numbers will be slightly different ... If we see something along the lines of 14,000 to 15,000 (votes,) we have bigger issues to worry about.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 4:00 PM.