Joe Biden Wins Georgia Recount by 12,000 Votes

President-elect Joe Biden has won Georgia by 12,284 votes, according to the audit required by state law.

His narrow victory in Georgia will be officially certified by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

It comes as legal efforts by President Donald Trump’s allies to challenge his defeat were dismissed in three other states.

On November 20, Brad Raffensperger said he was disappointed that his party lost but that “numbers don’t lie”.

Joe Biden is set to take office in January as the 46th US president.

His victory margin in the public vote overall stands at more than 5.9 million. His victory in the Electoral College system is projected to be 306 to 232 – far above the 270 he needs to win.

President Trump has so far refused to concede and has made allegations of widespread electoral fraud, without providing any evidence.

The latest defeat comes as he has summoned Michigan state lawmakers to the White House on November 20 ahead of that state’s deadline to certify election results.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany denied that President Trump was holding a campaign “advocacy meeting” with the lawmakers, saying it was instead a routine check-in with local officials.

On November 19, Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger – who oversees the election process – said the hand audit of ballots had not altered Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

He said in a statement: “Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results.”

On November 20, the self-proclaimed Trump supporter went on to say: “Like other Republicans. I’m disappointed, our candidate didn’t win Georgia’s electoral votes.

“I live by the motto that numbers don’t lie. As secretary of state, I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct.”

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The Democrats’ victory is their first in a presidential race in Georgia since Bill Clinton was elected in 1992.

The recount found the error rate was no greater than 0.73% in any county and Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Donald Trump remained at under 0.5%. The results will be certified on November 20.

Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis said the audit had gone “exactly as we expected” because, she said without evidence, the state had recounted illegal ballots.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who serves as Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, told CNN on Thursday: “One of the big complaints is these machines somehow flipped votes or changed votes or did stuff. They didn’t, at least not in Georgia. We proved it.”

During the audit this week, nearly 6,000 untallied votes were found – paring back Joe Biden’s lead slightly – but they were the result of human error and not fraud, Gabriel Sterling said.

Officials in Floyd County have fired their election manager over the matter, local media reported on November 19.

He was speaking after a virtual meeting with governors, including Democrats and Republicans, about the coronavirus crisis.

Asked about President Trump’s lack of concession, Joe Biden said the president was sending “incredibly damaging messages… to the rest of the world about how democracy functions” and that he would be remembered “as being one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history”.

Republicans lost their final lawsuit in Georgia as a court rejected their effort to block the results’ certification, which happened on November 20. The judge who dismissed the case was appointed by President Trump last year.

In Arizona, a judge rejected a lawsuit filed last week by the state Republican Party seeking a new audit of ballots in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix – the state capital and largest city.

In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign lost their bid in state court to throw out more than 2,000 postal ballots.

At a briefing on November 19, Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani continued to lay out unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and accusations of electoral fraud.

He railed against the reporting of his team’s legal challenges, saying the media had shown an “irrational pathological hatred for the president”.

Rudy Giuliani also said the campaign was withdrawing its last remaining lawsuit in Michigan. He said it had achieved its aim of stopping the certification of the result in one key county.