The Trump campaign announced on Saturday (Nov. 20) that it has requested a recount in Georgia. The move comes after it was reported on Friday that after a full hand recount, President-elect Joe Biden won the state by more than 12,000 votes.
The team released a statement requesting signature matching on absentee ballots. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has stated that it is not possible to match signatures at this point of the process since ballots are separated from envelopes to provide privacy for the voters’ choices, and a two-step verification signature process has already been done.
“President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest recount in Georgia, which has to include signature matching and other vital safeguards,” the Trump campaign said in a statement Saturday. The recount they requested will be a machine recount.
Georgia already completed a full hand recount of all the state’s ballots in the state earlier in the week. Republicans Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Secretary of State, and Governor Brian Kemp have also certified the election results. CNN also reported that officials have said repeatedly that the audit confirmed there was “no widespread fraud” or “irregularities” in the election, as the president has repeatedly claimed. That is still not enough for the Trump campaign.
Biden’s win in the state was confirmed following the recount on Friday (Nov. 20), and it determined that he won by a little over .2%. The recount showed a slight decrease from the pre-audit results, with the final tally showing the president-elect beating Trump by 12,284 votes. The southern state allows for a candidate to request a recount following certification if the margin of victory is within .5 percentage points—and that’s what Trump’s team is seeking to do.
After certifying the results, Kemp asked Raffensperger to address the concerns and to do a “sample of audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes and compare those to the signatures on applications and on file that the secretary of state’s office.”
CBS News reported that several memory cards were found in different counties around the states that contained votes that were not reported in the first count. The addition of the votes changed the tally slightly, but they were not enough to change the initial results that named Biden the winner in the state. The former vice president’s Georgia win marks the first time in 28 years that the red state votes for a democratic candidate in a presidential election.