201104-Atlanta-Fulton County elections workers sort absentee ballots at State Farm Arena on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 4, 2020. Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Mark Niesse
Election workers plan to begin a statewide recount of the presidential race in Georgia on Thursday as Joe Biden held a 14,000-vote lead over Donald Trump.
The recount will require human review of nearly 5 million ballots, stacked into piles sorted for each candidate and then counted in each county.
Georgia has never conducted a statewide recount of paper ballots before, and it wasn’t possible before this year when the state added paper ballots to the process. Previous recounts were conducted by recalculating vote counts stored on computers.
The recount is certain to be a labor-intensive process starting just eight days before the Nov. 20 deadline for Georgia’s final results to be certified by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. At stake are Georgia’s 16 votes in the Electoral College, which is scheduled to meet to cast votes for president Dec. 14.
Raffensperger announced the recount Wednesday following demands from Trump’s defenders and calls for his resignation from his fellow Republicans, Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Details of how the recount will be conducted were expected to be announced Thursday morning. Then county election officials can begin.
Observers from the Republican and Democratic parties will be present to oversee the process.
The recount will be conducted under Georgia’s new audit rules, which require election workers to review the printed text or filled-in bubbles on each ballot. Ballots won’t be rescanned by computers.
Read the original story on AJC.com.
