Raffensperger Orders Hand Re-count of all presidential ballots statewide, changes run-off dates
By MJ Kneiser, WLHR
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has ordered a hand recount of all Presidential Election ballots statewide as well as a change to the run-off elections.
In a press conference Wednesday morning, the Secretary of State announced the change saying two run-off elections so close together was too hard on County election offices.
That means now that the Hart County Commission District 1 race between Republican Michael Bennett and Incumbent RC Oglesby, who ran as independent, will be held January 5th, as will the run-off race in Franklin County for the Public Service Commissioner District 4 race.
On Wednesday, Raffensperger also announced that a statewide risk-limiting audit of the Presidential race will be taking place before Georgia election results are certified.
That process begins this morning with training for all County Election officials statewide.
Secretary of State spokesman Chris Harvey said the recount will likely begin this afternoon or Friday.
Right now, Raffensperger said the difference in the vote count between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is 14,100.
Raffensperger said because of that, all of the ballots have to be counted in that race, not just a sample.
According to Wikipedia, a risk-limiting audit is one way of checking whether computers tallied an election accurately.
It involves storing paper ballots securely until they can be checked, manually comparing a statistical sample of paper ballots to the computers’ records for those same ballots, and checking whether all the computer records of ballots in the election were totaled correctly.
According to election officials as with other election audits, the goal is to identify not only intentional alterations of ballots and tallies but also bugs in election machines, such as software errors, scanners with blocked sensors, or scanners skipping some ballots.
President Donald Trump has asked for the recount, which will be a hand recount of all votes in Georgia because of how close the race is and Republican’s belief of widespread voter fraud in the State this election.