Georgia has confirmed Democratic President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the Nov 3 election in the state after completing a hand audit of ballots on Thursday, November 19, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.
The audit, launched after unofficial results showed Biden
leading Republican President Donald Trump by about 14,000 out of more than 5
million votes cast, ended with Biden winning by 12,284, according to data from
Raffensperger's office.
"Georgia's historic first statewide audit reaffirmed
that the state's new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and
reported results," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a
Republican, said in a statement.
"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 confirmation makes Biden the first Democratic
presidential candidate to win the southern US state in almost three decades,
since Bill Clinton in 1992.
The Biden campaign's communications director for Georgia,
Jaclyn Rothenberg, said in a statement Thursday evening that the recount
outcome, "simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected
Joe Biden to be their next president."
"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," she said.
Raffensperger, a Republican, is expected to formally certify
Biden's victory today, November 20th, despite pressure from Trump, who has
claimed without evidence that there were widespread irregularities and fraud in
states that he lost to Biden, including Georgia.
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