Nov. 20 (UPI) — Georgia certified the statewide results of its election Friday, handing President-elect Joe Biden a win in the state where Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the “numbers don’t lie.”
The certification came after the state completed a manual recount of about 5 million votes. The audit showed Biden had close to 12,300 more votes than President Donald Trump, giving him the state’s 16 key electoral votes.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp must now sign off on the election results by 5 p.m. Saturday.
During a news conference Friday, Raffensberger hit out at Trump’s repeated accusations, without evidence, of fraud in the Georgia election. He said he supports the president politically, but it’s not up to him to change the outcome of the race.
“Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by that numbers don’t lie,” he said. “As secretary of state, I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct.
“The numbers reflect the verdict of the people, not a decision by the secretary of state’s office or our courts, or of either campaigns.”
The Trump campaign sought to halt Georgia’s certification process over what they said was improper procedures by elections officials, but never presented anything to support the claim.
District Judge Steven Grimberg on Thursday threw out the case, saying he found no evidence of irregularities.
“It harms the public interest in countless ways, particularly in the environment in which this election occurred. To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and significant disenfranchisement,” Grimberg said.
Biden’s projected total is 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, well beyond the 270 needed to win the presidency. The president has yet to concede defeat.
Biden is the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state of Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992.
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