Joe Biden wins Georgia after hand recount affirms lead

Joe Biden has won Georgia and its 16 electoral votes after a hand tally of election ballots affirmed the former vice-president’s narrow lead over President Donald Trump.

The hand tally of about 5 million votes stemmed from an audit required by a new state law and was not in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request.

The state has until Friday to certify results that have been certified and submitted by the counties.

Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, said on Thursday evening that the audit was complete.

Results were posted on the secretary of state’s website.

No individual county showed a variation in margin larger than 0.73%, and the variation in margin in 103 of the state’s 159 counties was less than 0.05%, Mr Sterling said.

“Every single vote was touched by a human audit team and counted,” he said. “Obviously, the audit confirms the original result of the election, namely that Joe Biden won the presidential contest in the state of Georgia.”

The results that will be certified are the totals certified by the counties, not those resulting from the audit.

Once the state certifies the election results, the losing campaign has two business days to request a recount since the margin remains within 0.5%.

That recount would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, the secretary of state’s office has said.

It was up to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to select the race to be audited, and he said the presidential race made the most sense because of its significance and the tight margin separating the candidates.

Because of that small margin, Mr Raffensperger said a full hand recount was necessary.

Votes that had not previously been counted were found in several counties during the audit, which required re-certification of the election results in those counties.

In Floyd County, more than 2,500 ballots were discovered during the audit that had not previously been scanned, and the secretary of state’s office had called for the firing of the county’s chief elections clerk, Robert Brady.

The county elections board on Thursday voted to issue a written reprimand to Mr Brady and, because it was his second written reprimand within six months, to fire him in accordance with county policy, board member Melanie Conrad said in an email.

Several other counties found memory cards with votes that had not been uploaded and counted prior to the audit.