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The move comes after an extraordinary and prolonged effort by President Donald Trump and leading Republicans to undermine confidence in the election outcome by baselessly claiming the fraud and refusing to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. For more than three decades, the organization, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, has helped support democratic elections in countries in times of fragility and volatility.
Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Wednesday that the state will audit the race, which will include all counties reporting, by hand, the nearly 5 million votes cast.
On Friday afternoon, CNN projected that Biden would win the state. On Friday night, Biden led Trump by more than 14,000 votes.
The Carter Center announced Friday that it will send monitors to several county audit boards in Peach State to watch the recount. He did not monitor voters when they cast their votes last week, and the organization said that review was not part of a broader assessment of the election as a whole.
“What we’re watching is what a lot of people call the manual recount. Because the margin in the presidential race is so close, this type of verification essentially requires a manual review of every ballot,” Paige Alexander, CEO of The Carter Center, said in a statement. “This is unusual, but it offers an opportunity to build confidence in the electoral system before the results are certified by the state.”
Carter Center spokesperson Soyia Ellison confirmed to CNN that Georgia will be the first time the organization has been involved in monitoring any part of a U.S. election.
In August, in response to its view that Americans were losing confidence in their country’s electoral process, the Carter Center, for the first time in its history, launched a campaign in the United States to “build transparency and confidence. in the electoral process ”.
“We have given priority to countries with significant potential to advance democratic transitions or to places where democracy has been threatened. Most of these countries have weak institutions and are plagued by political polarization, lack of public trust, ethnic or racial divisions, or a history of troubled elections. Often there is concern that election results may not be seen as credible or may trigger violence, ”wrote Jason Carter, Chairman of the Centre’s Board of Directors, and David Carroll, Head of the Centre’s Democracy Program, in a CNN editorial.
“Sadly, much of that description now applies to the United States. If there has ever been a time to address democracy and elections in our country, it is now,” they added.
The Carter Center has observed more than 100 elections in 39 countries, assessing the integrity of the process and helping nations meet international standards for democratic elections.
The manual recount in Georgia began Friday morning and is due to be completed by midnight Wednesday, just two days before the Nov. 20 deadline to certify the results.
Besides the presidential election, Georgia also hosts two high-stakes U.S. Senate races that appear to be heading into the run-off election in January. Earlier this week, the two US state senators who are both fighting for re-election, Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, demanded Raffensperger’s resignation, accusing him without proof of failing to “organize honest and transparent elections “. Raffensperger quickly rejected their appeals.
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