Georgia won’t have ‘any real changes’ in presidential outcome, official says. Here’s why
The by-hand audit of Georgia’s presidential race is finding slight or no differences between the margins that counties initially reported, despite allegations from Republicans regarding voter irregularities, rigged voting machines and tampering.
Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system implementation manager, told reporters Tuesday that the secretary of state’s office doesn’t expect massive shifts in the margin between President-elect Joe Biden and incumbent Donald Trump.
Georgia’s top election officials have launched two investigations into potential issues in the Atlanta area, and one north Georgia county will have to rescan a portion of votes after its audit revealed roughly 2,600 uncounted ballots.
But barring any issues like the one seen in Floyd County, the official, certified results in counties will not change. The purpose of Georgia’s audit under current law is to confirm the outcome of the election, not the exact margins.
“Many of the counties are coming in spot, dead on,” Sterling said. “For the most part, we aren’t going to see any real changes moving forward ... more than likely.”
Sterling’s announcement comes as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger alleges fellow Republicans, including South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, are pressuring him to find ways to exclude ballots.
“Our job in the state is to follow the law and follow the process,” Sterling said. “And that’s what we continue to do.”
Is Georgia’s audit almost done?
Floyd County’s Board of Elections will rescan all of the county’s early, in-person votes after its audit revealed roughly 2,600 ballots went uncounted. Trump gained a net total of 800 votes, cutting Biden’s lead in the state to about 13,400.
In addition to the uncounted ballots, there was an issue with how county election officials scanned provisional ballots. The secretary of state’s office has called for Floyd’s election director, Robert Brady, to resign.
“The managerial issues are just too great at this point,” Sterling said.
The office also launched two investigations into Fulton County’s election process. One was tied to handling of absentee and early vote ballots during the water leak at State Farm Arena, and the other was tied to election observers being asked to leave.
“There was generally bad management,” Sterling said. “What we are seeing in Fulton is managerial sloppiness which opens the door for potential problems.”
The state is through 4.7 million of the roughly 5 million ballots cast. County election officials are on a “good schedule,” and Sterling said he expects the audit will continue into Wednesday as quality control work is ongoing. County election officials must complete their audit by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, and the state must certify its election results by Nov. 20.
Republicans pressuring Raffensperger
Raffensperger told the Washington Post Monday that some Republican officials have pressured him over the state’s audit and made claims about illegally cast ballots.
His office has spent the past several weeks thoroughly debunking conspiracy theories, such as machines from Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia’s voting machines, leaving thousands of Trump votes out of the count.
Pro V&V, a U.S. Election Assistance Commission-certified testing laboratory, audited a random sample of the state’s voting machines. They found no evidence that the machines were tampered with, according to a news release from Raffensperger’s office.
Raffensperger told the Post that Graham questioned him during a Friday phone call about the state’s signature-matching law and if biased poll workers could have accepted ballots with non-matching signatures. Raffensperger said he felt Graham was asking him to toss some legal ballots. Graham denied Raffensperger’s claims.
Sterling was one of several people on the phone call, but he had to leave early. He said he heard questions from Graham about the possibility of a county’s absentee ballots being thrown out if signatures didn’t match on a certain portion of them.
In Georgia, a voter who requests an absentee ballot on paper must sign it. Election officials compare that request signature to one in the state’s voter registration files. An outer ballot envelope is also signed by a voter, and that signature is compared to the state’s voter database. Ballots removed from signed envelopes can’t be traced back to the voter to protect ballot secrecy.
Georgia election officials have acknowledged that illegal votes were cast, but not enough to flip the state’s vote to Trump.
“I can see how both sides could potentially be correct,” Sterling said about the call. “We were answering process questions. ...The President is going to continue to fight. His supporters are going to continue to fight.”
If the margin of victory is within 0.5%, Trump could request a recount after the state certifies its election results. That recount would be done electronically. Georgia election officials have said lawsuits from the Trump campaign are likely.
“It is their right to do so,” Sterling said of a requested recount. “This hand audit is unprecedented. ...We are seeing that the machines counted the votes absolutely as they were voted by voters.”
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 2:04 PM with the headline "Georgia won’t have ‘any real changes’ in presidential outcome, official says. Here’s why."