Georgia’s top election official says Biden wins latest recount

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the third counting of ballots in the state’s presidential race, confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory once again over Donald Trump.

Raffensperger announced Monday afternoon that he signed off on the results after nearly 5 million ballots were rescanned starting just before Thanksgiving. 

The size of Biden’s victory over Trump shrank by 886 votes from 12,760 from the initially certified results to 11,784 votes in the latest recount requested by the president. But as election officials assured since Biden was first declared the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, the recount did not change the outcome.

The certification comes as some Georgia GOP leaders press for more investigations into allegations of election fraud as Trump’s campaign and the president’s supporters continue to fight the results in courts and in the public arena.

Over the weekend, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp refused to order a special session so that legislators could illegally reverse the election results, and on Monday, U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Georgia Judge Timothy Batten dismissed a lawsuit filed by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell.

“Today is an important day for election integrity in Georgia and across the country,”  Raffensperger said in a statement after he made the certification official. “The claims in the Kraken lawsuit prove to be as mythological as the creature for which they’re named. Georgians can now move forward knowing that their votes, and only their legal votes, were counted accurately, fairly, and reliably.”

Widespread fraud accusations have been called unfounded by Raffensperger’s investigators, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Meanwhile, more than 30 of the roughly 50 election lawsuits filed on Trump’s behalf in several states have been rejected or dropped.

The latest argument from Trump attorneys is that Raffensperger’s office violated election law by allowing people to request absentee ballots through a new online portal using a Georgia driver’s license or ID number instead of a signature.

A record 1.3 million Georgians cast absentee ballots in the November election, with their popularity soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Kemp and a host of other Georgia Republican elected-officials have repeatedly asked Raffensperger to conduct an audit of the signatures on ballot envelopes, but Raffenseprger has so far declined to do so.