US elections: Georgia secretary of state “There will be likely a recount”

GEORGIA RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL

Georgia remains “too close to call,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at press conference.

Of the 5 million votes cast, “we’ll have a margin of a few thousand.” With a margin that small, “there will be, likely, a recount in Georgia,” said Raffensperger — reiterating similar comments from earlier in the day. “The final tally in Georgia, at this point, has huge implications for the entire country.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that the presidential race in the state “remains too close to call” during a news conference Friday.

“The focus for our office and for the county elections officials, for now, remains on making sure that every legal vote is counted and recorded accurately,” he said.

Raffensperger added that out of about the 5 million votes cast, the margin will be within a “few thousand.”

“With a margin that small, there will be likely a recount in Georgia,” he said.

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said the number of outstanding votes remains “about the same as they were this morning. Not too much change.”

Sterling said that there were about 4,000 outstanding ballots to be counted across a handful of counties earlier in the day.

Sterling noted that 18,008 ballots from military and other citizens from Georgia who are overseas have been accepted by the state. Approximately 8,410 are “still available to be received” he said, if those ballots were postmarked by Election Day and received by end of business Friday.

“That does not mean that there’s a bucket of 8,410 votes to be counted. That means there are 8,410 votes that could have been postmarked Tuesday and could be received by the elections officials today, so as I said earlier, it’s going to be more than 0 and less than 8,410,” Sterling explained.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden currently leads President Trump in total votes counted to date across Georgia by 1,585 votes, Sterling said.

Ballot counting in Arizona will extend to the weekend with 250,000 ballots left to count.

Arizona has an estimated 250,000 to 270,000 unaccounted ballots left to count, according to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.

Hobbs said 137,000 of those ballots were in Maricopa County and that after the release of more results tonight, that number would go down below 100,000 ballots.