Georgia certifies Biden's victory, hours after premature announcement.
Last edited Fri Nov 20, 2020, 05:31 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: New York Times
ATLANTA — Georgia officials on Friday certified President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state, hours after a staffer mistakenly sent out a statement saying the process had been completed — a surreal last-minute glitch in a critical and closely watched battleground state. The certification ensured that Mr. Biden would receive the state’s 16 electoral votes and dealt a blow to President Trump’s bid to overturn the vote in a half-dozen battleground states, and with it, the national election that Mr. Biden won decisively.
It was an early milestone in the state-by-state process of finalizing Mr. Biden’s victory, a process that is set to unfold in the coming days as Mr. Trump continues to deny his defeat and cry fraud and his campaign and its surrogates inundate the courts with largely baseless lawsuits that have so far been unsuccessful. “I live by the motto that numbers don’t lie,” the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official and a Republican, said at a Friday morning news conference at the state capitol. “I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct.”
The certification followed a hand recount of the state’s five million votes that Mr. Raffensperger ordered after it was requested by the Trump campaign. The recount found that Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump by more than 12,000 votes. “Like other Republicans, I’m disappointed our candidate didn’t win Georgia’s electoral votes,” Mr. Raffensperger said.
The news came several hours after Georgia officials mistakenly made a premature announcement that the certification was complete. “We had a staffer who sent out the wrong press release,” said Jordan Fuchs, Georgia’s deputy secretary of state. The official documentation of Mr. Biden’s triumph in Georgia, a state no Democrat had won in nearly three decades, underscored the resurgent power of the party.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/20/us/joe-biden-trump/georgia-certifies-bidens-victory-hours-after-premature-announcement
FINALLY OFFICIAL!
(switched sources because the "live" thing is a PITA).
Updated WaPo article -
Despite an earlier announcement, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said the office is still completing its certification. The office issued a correction, reversing an earlier announcement that had declared the certification was complete. Raffensperger said he expects certification to be completed later Friday.
President-elect Joe Biden plans to convene Friday with the two top Democrats in Congress as he continues his transition to the White House, even as President Trump presses ahead with a bid to reverse the election results. Trump has invited state Republican leaders from Michigan to meet with him at the White House.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2020/11/20/joe-biden-trump-transition-live-updates/
Original WaPo article and headline-
Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) on Friday certified the state's general election results, including Biden as the winner of the state's presidential vote. The announcement affirms Biden's narrow lead over President Trump after a hand-recount of roughly 5 million votes cast for president, the largest recount of its kind in U.S. history. The election results will now be submitted to Gov. Brian Kemp (R) for his certification, which is due Saturday afternoon and is considered a pro forma action to accept the secretary of state's tally.
The governor is not involved in the administering or finalizing of the state's results, according to the secretary of state's office. The Trump campaign has until next Tuesday evening to request another recount of the results, which would launch a process to re-scan the presidential ballots that have already been hand-recounted and audited. State election officials have said that they hope the hand-recount reassures the public about the outcome of the election.
Nonetheless, election officials across Georgia have been preparing to re-scan the ballots in anticipation of a potential request from the Trump campaign. Biden led Trump by 12,284 votes, according to the audited results that were certified Friday. The final votes resulted in a 0.0099 percent variation from the original margin, according to the secretary of state. "In certifying the results, the Secretary of State affirmed that all 159 counties have provided to the state the total votes tabulated for each state and federal candidate," read a statement from the Georgia Secretary of State's office Friday.
The statement added: "Certification does not preclude the state from continuing any current investigations related to the General Election or from pursuing any future allegations that may arise from these elections." Biden's narrow lead has prompted a barrage of attacks from Trump and other top Republicans in Georgia, who have repeatedly sought to question the integrity of the election in the state. Trump's lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday that the campaign plans on filing a lawsuit in Georgia challenging its election administration. State election officials have said there is no evidence of widespread election fraud or irregularity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2020/11/20/joe-biden-trump-transition-live-updates/#link-YF6EV4RF6RDGFAPWQXNF465Y5Y
= new reply since forum marked as read
um.... "spoiled"? 
Nothing surprises me anymore.
(been wanting to say this) I like your owl! 
Now Trump can ask for a recount. 
Of course, won’t that change the totals BACK to the ones that were first reported which was before they discovered a problem with some ballots not being scanned? Then it would improve Biden’s numbers.
Any how, we should be fine. The vote margin was a good size.
the margin is > 0.5%, which would have triggered an automatic recount (despite them deciding to do their own manual one ).
in Congress as he continues his transition to the White House.'
that someone in their press office "accidentally" released the annoucement too soon. I think they have to have the cert done by 5 pm ET so I expect they'll do that "official" announcement again around then.
