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- The Trump campaign’s lawyers said in a statement Saturday that they requested a recount in Georgia, after the election results showed President-elect Joe Biden won the state.
- The petition was filed one day after Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, said he had officially certified Biden as the winner of the state’s presidential election.
- The Friday certification came after an audit that included a hand recount of more than 5 million paper ballots, which showed Biden won the state by more than 12,000 votes.
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The Trump campaign’s lawyers said in a statement Saturday that they requested a recount in Georgia, after the election results showed President-elect Joe Biden won the state.
The petition was filed one day after Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, said he had officially certified Biden as the winner of the state’s presidential election.
The Friday certification came after an audit that included a hand recount of more than 5 million paper ballots. The final results showed Biden had received 49.5% of the vote to President Donald Trump’s 49.3%, with the president-elect winning by more than 12,000 votes.
“Today, the Trump campaign filed a petition for recount in Georgia,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “We are focused on ensuring that every aspect of Georgia State Law and the U.S. Constitution are followed so that every legal vote is counted.”
The statement also stressed the importance of signature matching for mail-in ballots, something that is completed upon receipt of the ballot, before it is counted.
Raffensperger, who received threats for his work overseeing the election, has expressed full confidence in the vote count.
"The election appears to be very accurate," the secretary of state told Insider's Grace Panetta. "And as a Republican, I'm disappointed, but as a secretary of state, my job is to report accurate results."
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Saturday he again defended the accuracy of the count, saying, "Georgia's voting system has never been more secure or trustworthy."
Georgia law allows for a candidate to request a recount if the results are within 0.5%. Biden beat Trump by 0.25%.
Georgia flipped for Biden after supporting Trump in 2016, marking the first win for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since 1992.