Georgia begins hand recount amid internal GOP fighting in state

Georgia will begin fully on Friday with a manual recount of all ballots in its razor-sharp election between President Trump and President-elect Biden, in a move that will not change the outcome of the general presidential race – but the one of Georgia’s secretary of state said he will ensure that there is confidence in the state’s results.

The manual recount of every ballot in the state must begin in every county on Friday morning and be completed by Wednesday, two days before the state’s goal of having election results certified by November 20. Some counties began their recount on Thursday. .

“With the margin so close, it will take a full manual recount in every county,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a briefing Wednesday, adding that the recount “will build confidence.”

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The recount comes as Raffensperger comes under fire from his own party, with the two Republican state senators calling for his resignation in a statement implying a lack of transparency and saying that illegal votes may have been counted, but not did not cite specific evidence of fraud. .

“The management of the elections in Georgia has become an embarrassment for our state. Georgians are outraged, and rightly so. We have been clear from the start: every legal vote must be counted. Any illegal vote must not,” the Sense . David Perdue, R-Ga., And Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., Said in a joint statement. “And there has to be transparency and consistency in the counting process. It’s not difficult. It’s not partisan. It’s American.”

Raffensperger hit back at senators in a statement rejecting their calls to resign.

“As a Republican, I am concerned that Republicans keep the US Senate,” Raffensperger said. “I recommend that Senators Loeffler and Perdue begin to focus on this.

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He also said what many pundits have been repeating in recent days about the Trump campaign lawsuits and recount calls: that while there probably was election fraud, it is almost certain that there wasn’t enough to close the margins Biden opened in states he won or even in a place like Georgia that has yet to be called up for Biden. The president-elect leads in Georgia with just over 14,000 votes on Friday morning.

“Was there an illegal vote? I’m sure there was,” Raffensperger said. “And my office is investigating all of this. Is it reaching the numbers or the margin needed to change the outcome by giving President Trump the electoral votes for Georgia? It’s unlikely.”

He added on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning that he believes a “relatively small amount” of errors will be found and that the first count will be “fairly accurate”.

Nonetheless, Raffensperger told a conference on Wednesday that the “probability theorem” requires a full recount of every ballot by such a small margin – three-tenths of a percent.

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“When you have 5 million votes and the margin is so close, 14,000, if we withdraw 10,000 votes all of a sudden, that could mean that the person who won,” he said. for follow-up. “We take 100,000 out of it, you could say that’s the person who won. We take out a million, that person won. And that’s why mathematically, you actually have to do a full manual recount of all of them because that the margin is so close. “

Meanwhile, the secretary of state will be quarantined as the recount takes place after his wife tests positive for the coronavirus, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.

Trump did not concede the election to Biden, and the potential for his campaign to secure Georgia’s 16 electoral votes is a near-necessity as he also tries to find ways to oust Biden’s leaders in races. that have already been triggered in Pennsylvania, Nevada and elsewhere.

Trump 2020 lawyer Matt Morgan said in a press call Thursday that when Georgia recounts the campaign will have observers and will be allowed to observe the process, unlike cases in Pennsylvania where the campaign has stated that she was not authorized to observe the count. of votes.

And Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., Was sent by the Trump campaign to lead his recount effort.

“A lot has happened in this race that nobody expected,” Collins said in “Bill Hemmer Reports” this week in response to an editorial by the top GOP official and former deputy chief of staff at the GOP. former President George W. Bush Karl Rove. The editorial, published in the Wall Street Journal, noted that recounts can historically change vote totals by the hundreds, not the tens of thousands.

“In Georgia we are seeing a very close election, 14,000 votes, we are seeing irregularities,” Collins said. “But we also have the first of its kind and it’s a manual recount that will actually take those ballots and actually put them to rest and say in the future that we are actually checking those ballots against the machine’s count. “

Trump himself, on Monday, also hoped for a victory in Georgia.

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“Georgia will be a great presidential victory, as it was election night!” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, the Biden transition says it is moving forward despite Trump’s refusal to concede and the fact that the General Service administration has yet to officially establish that Biden is the winner of the election. This verification would allow those responsible for the transition to receive intelligence reports, open public funds and offices for the transition, etc.

“The most important thing … is that [Biden’s] the focus is on his work as president-elect, and his job as president-elect at this point in the process is mainly to push forward his agenda to prepare for being president on January 20, “the chief recently appointed. of Biden’s Cabinet Ron Klain said Thursday on MSNBC.

Fox News’ Kristina Biddle, Christina Wurm and Talia Kaplan contributed to this report.