Joe Biden confirmed as Georgia winner after
recount
President-elect wins Georgia’s 16 electoral college
votes
Biden first Democrat to win there since Bill Clinton
in 1996
Martin
Pengelly in New York and Maanvi Singh in San Francisco
Fri 20 Nov
2020 01.06 GMTLast modified on Fri 20 Nov 2020 02.40 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/19/joe-biden-president-georgia-recount
Joe Biden won the election by 306-232 electoral
college votes.
President-elect Joe Biden has been confirmed as the
winner of Georgia, after the state conducted a hand recount.
The first
Democrat to take the state since Bill Clinton in 1996, Biden wins its 16
electoral college votes as part of a victory by 306-232.
The
Associated Press called the race on Thursday evening following the recount,
which election officials said reaffirmed Biden’s victory more than two weeks
after election day.
The recount
resulted in officials in four counties discovering a total of about 5,800
votes. Trump has inched about 1,400 votes closer to Biden as a result, but remains
the loser. The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said that
the discount was due to human error, and there was no evidence of rigging or
widespread fraud.
“Georgia’s
historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper
ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” he added. “This
is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who
moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period
of time.”
“The
recount process simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected
Joe Biden to be their next president,” said Jaclyn Rothenberg, the Biden
campaign spokeswoman, in an email to the Associated Press.
“We are
grateful to the election officials, volunteers and workers for working overtime
and under unprecedented circumstances to complete this recount, as the utmost
form of public service.”
Donald
Trump has refused to concede the race, contesting and questioning results in
states including Georgia and pursuing recounts or delays in certification while
making wild and unfounded accusations of electoral fraud.
The
president continued to do so on Thursday, with specific reference to Georgia,
before the result was confirmed.
But the
hand recount of about 5m votes was not held in response to any suspected
problems with results in Georgia or any official recount request.
It stemmed
instead from an audit required by a new state law. Selecting the race to be
audited, the Georgia secretary of state, a Republican, said the presidential
race made the most sense because of its significance and the tight margin
separating the candidates. That, he said, made a full hand recount necessary.
Gabriel
Sterling, the official who oversaw implementation of the new Georgia voting
system, said before the recount result was announced that previously uncounted
ballots in four counties would reduce Biden’s margin of victory from around
14,000 to about 12,800.
The state
has until Friday to certify results certified and submitted by the counties.
Once the state does so, the losing campaign will have two business days to
request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%.
That
recount would be done using scanners and would be paid for by the counties, Sterling
said.
The news
came as Biden approached a record 80m votes with ballots still being counted in
California and New York. Voter turnout in the 2020 election was the highest in
more than a century, according to data from the Associated Press and the US
Elections Project.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário