A second recount has begun in Georgia after the first state mandated audit confirmed Biden’s shock victory.
Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, confirmed the news of the Democrat win on Friday the 19th amid disappointment that his own party lost.
A second recount has begun in Georgia after the first state mandated audit confirmed Biden’s shock victory.
Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, confirmed the news of the Democrat win on Friday the 19th amid disappointment that his own party lost.
A second recount was then requested by Trump’s team at the weekend.
The first recount was triggered automatically by state law and found 2,400 lost ballots.
The Republicans have held Georgia for 28 years, Biden’s win in the state was one of the election’s biggest blows to the Trump administration.
Biden beat Trump by over 12,000 votes, yet this still only accounted for around 0.25% of the vote, allowing Trump’s team to request a second recount.
During the election there have been many questions around voter suppression and fraud in Georgia, Trump’s campaign have voiced their concerns over the legitimacy of signatures on some ballots, though these will not be looked at during the recount.
Claire, a US student at St. Andrews University who worked for the Democrat campaign in Georgia has been keeping up with the race from Scotland.
“In Georgia it has been a mess unfortunately, when the voting started people were waiting in line for hours”
“In 2016 during the Trump race there was also a big race going on in Georgia with Stacey Abrams, a black, female legislator from Georgia who really energised the democratic face. She was running against Brian Kemp, a very traditional Republican. There is strong evidence that he purged voter rolls prior to and during the election and people who wanted to vote were unable to and she lost by 30,000 votes”
“People who want to vote Democrat are very disenfranchised with the political process now because of this. It is really a matter of not just speaking to people who are uninformed but also people who are informed and are apathetic about the whole process.”
In a television appearance Stacey Abrams spoke of the efforts from people like Claire and believes they were the reason behind Biden’s win.
“We also got to work in Georgia and around the country fighting voter suppression,” she said, “voters who wanted to be heard had the ability this time to actually make it through the gauntlet, get to the ballot box and cast their votes. But this work did not happen overnight, it did not happen over two years.”
The recount will be conducted by scanning machines and began on Tuesday, it is not expected to change the result in the state.