Over 2,600 ballots in Floyd County, Georgia, that were not counted in the state’s original vote tally were discovered amid the recount, giving a slight boost to President Trump.
According to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffenspberger, the problem lay with the Floyd County election officials who failed to upload votes from a memory card in a ballot-scanning machine.
The incident marked the biggest issue found so far during Georgia’s hand recount and audit. Floyd County Republican Party chair Luke Martin called the mishap “concerning” but insisted that it “doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue.”
“I’m glad the audit revealed it, and it’s important that all votes are counted,” Martin told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Gabriel Sterling of the secretary of state’s office told WSB-TV that the newly discovered ballots will hand Trump an additional 800 votes — which still leaves Biden in the lead.
During a Monday evening news conference, Sterling called on the election director in Floyd County to step down. “The secretary, since this was such an amazing blunder and they had issues in August, would like to see that elections director in Floyd County step down from his position,” Sterling said.
Raffenspberger maintained that other counties so far have not found uncounted ballots, with recount figures closely matching their original numbers.
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While President Trump urged the state’s recount to recheck absentee ballot signatures, signature matching is impossible during recounts because ballot envelopes can’t be traced back to ballots once they’re opened. Moreover, ballot secrecy is protected by state and federal election laws.
This prompted the president to say that the recount is “close to meaningless.”
Another problem with the recount that calls its effectiveness into question is the fact that Republican observers are not being admitted at a high enough ratio to properly supervise the process.
David Shafer, chairman of the Republican Party of Georgia, revealed Friday that the party requested an observer be allowed at every counting table during the recount. But officials denied this request and are instead permitting them only one observer for every 10 tables.
Raffenspberger, who went into COVID-19 quarantine as the recount began, has been on the defensive against members of his own party who say he did not do enough to prevent voter fraud. He has repeatedly said he has not seen evidence of voter fraud that would have swung the election.
In fact, Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler called on him to resign over the situation, which has put the balance of the U.S. Senate in play due to a runoff that will be held in January.
“The management of Georgia elections has become an embarrassment for our state. Georgians are outraged, and rightly so,” a combined statement by the Republican senators read.
Raffenspberger fired back at the senators and is now accusing Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, of pressuring him to throw away votes.
An exchange between the Georgia secretary of state and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer went as follows:
Raffensperger said, “He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters. I got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out if you look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures. So that’s the impression that I got. But, you know, that signature matching in place, we have signature match when you request the ballot, and we have signature match when it comes on. With our new online absentee ballot portal that has I.D. We feel confident the election officials have done their job.”
Blitzer said, “I want to be clear, you say Senator Graham wanted you to find ways to get rid of legally cast ballots. CNN asked him about these allegations. He denied them and said that’s ridiculous. His words, ‘that’s ridiculous.’”
Raffensperger said, “Well, just an implication that ‘look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.’ And I think that they’re looking at that as part of a court case. And one actually was subsequently filed, wasn’t it?”
The fight against voter fraud is an uphill one when those seeking the truth are not only up against the Democrat Party and the media, but against controlled opposition in the form of so-called conservatives.
