43 of 159 counties done with Georgia presidential recount
ATLANTA - The Secretary of State’s Office said 43 of Georgia’s 159 counties have completed the full process in the recount of the presidential race as of Monday afternoon.
Gabriel Sterling, voting system implementation manager under Georgia’s Secretary of State, during a press conference, said most of those are the smaller counties. He said the larger counties still have a little further to go.
Georgia’s largest voting district, Fulton County, had issues on Sunday as one of the newly purchased Dominion Voting Systems servers crashed. Sterling said the state has sent them two additional scanners on Sunday and four more on Monday to help complete the count on time.
He also took a swipe at the county’s time management saying he would not have ended the days so early when the deadline was fast approaching and with previous issues. He said the county will be counting from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. on Tuesday to meet the midnight deadline.
Sterling said the county completed the Election Day ballots and is halfway through the absentee ballots.
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Fulton County released the following statement regarding the recount:
“Fulton County is continuing the recount of the November 3 Presidential Election and will complete the recount by the deadline provided by the Secretary of State’s Office.
“Over the weekend work was delayed due to the crash of a Dominion server that was certified by the Secretary of State’s office.
“The server was set up by Dominion and operated in accordance with the Secretary of State’s published guidelines (Step 11). A Dominion representative was onsite during the entire recount process and an additional specialist has been dispatched to resolve the issue.
“Recount teams will leave at 5 p.m. The recount will resume at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, December 1, and continue until 11 p.m. We will work on Wednesday, beginning at 8 am and work until the recount is finished.”
Elsewhere in metro Atlanta, he said DeKalb County is done counting and just needs to adjudicate and Cobb County is nearly complete. Gwinnett County is about 100,000 ballots from being done or about 60 percent complete. The county is expected to be done by lunch on Tuesday.
Officials for the Trump campaign requested the recount of the presidential race in Georgia since the initial results were within one percent. A separate hand-recount audit of the election was ordered by the Secretary of State’s Office immediately following the election to test the integrity of Georgia’s new voting system. While some uncounted votes were found during the audit, the end result stayed about the same.
Sterling said he doesn’t believe this recount, which is being conducted by scanner, will impact the outcome of the election. The first results of this recount is expected to be posted Tuesday afternoon.
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Meanwhile, election officials in seven counties will be working long hours on Tuesday to decide who will fill the final month of the late-Rep. John Lewis’ seat in Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, also who will fill the seat for State Senate District 39, and the district attorney for Clarke and Oconee counties. Several smaller municipal races will also be determined.
State election officials are also looking ahead to the federal runoff in January. Sterling said 947,928 absentee ballots have been requested, that is including the more than 604,000 rollover absentee ballots for seniors and other eligible individuals.
Sterling also mentioned he plans to ask the Georgia Legislature to move towards a license match for absentee ballots as opposed to a signature match due to its subjective nature.
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