Georgia Secretary of State Announces ‘Full, By Hand Recount’ as Biden Leads Trump By Narrow Margin

Georgia will conduct a recount by hand of the presidential race, as Joe Biden holds a small lead over President Donald Trump in the state.

Biden leads Trump by 14,111 votes in typically red Georgia. It is one of several states that propelled the Democratic candidate to victory in the presidential election, but also one that the Trump campaign is pointing to as evidence that the race was stolen. Republican leaders in the state — including the secretary of state and lieutenant governor — have dismissed that claim, maintaining there is no evidence of serious irregularities in how the election was carried out.

In a press conference Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said it would conduct “a full, by hand recount in each county.”

NEW: Georgia Sec. of State Raffensperger says the state will conduct a “full, by hand recount in each county”; Biden currently leads by 14,111 votes.

“We have all worked hard to bring fair and accurate counts to assure that the will of the voters is reflected in the final count” pic.twitter.com/SpijySCiuE

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 11, 2020

Given the amount of votes cast in the state (nearly five million), a full recount by hand will take time. Raffensperger previously estimated it would take “over a week, maybe two weeks.”

“It’s a very long process,” he said. “I know we would bring in extra staff. But you’re talking about five million ballots.”

Raffensperger has faced pressure from his own party to take the Trump campaign’s allegations of fraud seriously. Georgia’s two Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — who both face a runoff in January — called on the secretary of state to resign over his handling of the election.

Their statement that claimed a lack of transparency in Georgia’s vote counting process did not point to any specific examples of failures. Raffensperger dismissed their demand he resign.

While Biden’s lead is narrow in Georgia, experts doubt that it is small enough to be reversed in a recount.