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      Joe Biden confirmed as Georgia winner after recount

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      President-elect Joe Biden has been confirmed as the winner of Georgia, after the state conducted a hand recount.
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      The first Democrat to take the state since Bill Clinton in 1996, Biden wins its 16 electoral college votes as part of a victory by 306-232.
      The Associated Press called the race on Thursday evening following the recount, which election officials said reaffirmed Biden’s victory more than two weeks after election day.
      The recount resulted in officials in four counties discovering a total of about 5,800 votes. Trump has inched about 1,400 votes closer to Biden as a result, but remains the loser. The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said that the discount was due to human error, and there was no evidence of rigging or widespread fraud.
      “Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” he added. “This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time.”
      “The recount process simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected Joe Biden to be their next president,” said Jaclyn Rothenberg, the Biden campaign spokeswoman, in an email to the Associated Press.
      “We are grateful to the election officials, volunteers and workers for working overtime and under unprecedented circumstances to complete this recount, as the utmost form of public service.”

      Donald Trump has refused to concede the race, contesting and questioning results in states including Georgia and pursuing recounts or delays in certification while making wild and unfounded accusations of electoral fraud.
      The president continued to do so on Thursday, with specific reference to Georgia, before the result was confirmed.
      But the hand recount of about 5m votes was not held in response to any suspected problems with results in Georgia or any official recount request.
      It stemmed instead from an audit required by a new state law. Selecting the race to be audited, the Georgia secretary of state, a Republican, said the presidential race made the most sense because of its significance and the tight margin separating the candidates. That, he said, made a full hand recount necessary.
      Gabriel Sterling, the official who oversaw implementation of the new Georgia voting system, said before the recount result was announced that previously uncounted ballots in four counties would reduce Biden’s margin of victory from around 14,000 to about 12,800.
      The state has until Friday to certify results certified and submitted by the counties. Once the state does so, the losing campaign will have two business days to request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%.
      That recount would be done using scanners and would be paid for by the counties, Sterling said.
      The news came as Biden approached a record 80m votes with ballots still being counted in California and New York. Voter turnout in the 2020 election was the highest in more than a century, according to data from the Associated Press and the US Elections Project.

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      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      'Integrity still matters': the unlikely Republican standing up to Trump's voter fraud lies

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      Of all the Republicans to push back on Donald Trump’s baseless claims about voter fraud, Brad Raffensperger, the mild-mannered top election official in Georgia, did not seem like a likely candidate.
      It was just a few months ago that civil rights groups called on Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to resign from his position after voters spent hours waiting to vote in the primary election. He also faced criticism for declining to mail an absentee ballot application to all voters for the general election – something he did in the primary. And he raised alarms by creating an election fraud taskforce and trumpeting potential voter fraud prosecutions with little context.
      But after Trump lost Georgia to Joe Biden by around 13,000 votes, Raffensperger has emerged as one of the few Republican officials across the US who has aggressively disputed Trump’s baseless claims that fraud tainted the election result in the state. Trump, who endorsed Raffensperger in 2018, is now directing his ire at the secretary of state, and Georgia’s two Republican senators, both locked in separate runoff contests against Democrats, have called on Raffensperger to resign.
      Raffensperger, who is quarantining after his wife tested positive for Covid-19, continued to push back on the attacks against his office on Wednesday, saying Trump’s loss in the state – long considered a Republican stronghold – was the candidate’s fault.
      “I’m a conservative Republican. Yes, I wanted President Trump to win. But as secretary of state we have to do our job,” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “I’m gonna walk that fine, straight, line with integrity. I think that integrity still matters.”
      He added there were 24,000 Republicans who voted by mail in Georgia’s primary, but did not turn out to vote in November. Those voters didn’t vote again in November, Raffensperger suggested, because Trump railed against voting by mail.
      “Voters listened to the president, they didn’t show up,” he said. “That would have been a 10,000 person cushion that President Trump would have had if those folks would have come back out. They just stayed at home.”
      “Democrats really strongly pushed it,” he added. “I hope that, as a Republican, our party becomes very active.”
      Raffensperger says he has tried to use a fact-based approach to push back on false claims thrown at his state. When Republicans complained about the voting machines in Georgia, the state completed an audit on a random sampling of machines in six counties and found no tampering.
      “We keep trying to knock down these rumors. But it’s like whack-a-mole. It’s a rumor mill not supported by fact,” he said.
      He noted that the CDC said just before election day that voters with Covid-19 could vote in person, which might have scared off older voters from showing up at the polls. More

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      Lindsey Graham condemned for allegedly pressuring Georgia to toss out ballots

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      Democrats and political observers were quick to condemn the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, after it was reported that he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to exclude ballots in the state’s presidential recount.
      In a tweet, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the alleged approach “insane and illegal”.
      Hakeem Jeffries, a US representative from New York, asked: “Did Lindsey Graham illegally pressure the Georgia secretary of state to rig the election after the fact? The justice department should find out.”
      Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said: “For the chairman of the Senate committee charged with oversight of our legal system to have reportedly suggested that an election official toss out large numbers of legal ballots from American voters is appalling.”
      Graham, from South Carolina, should resign his role as chair of the judiciary committee, Bookbinder said.
      Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Georgia by just under 15,000 votes, the first time the state had gone for a Democrat since 1996. A hand recount was ordered, and is expected to be completed by 20 November.
      It is unlikely to change the result. If it did, the state’s 16 votes would not change the overall result in the electoral college, which Biden won 306-232. The threshold for victory is 270.
      Nonetheless, Trump refuses to concede defeat and continues to peddle debunked conspiracy theories regarding voter fraud and electoral irregularities which election officials from both parties have dismissed as baseless.
      Raffensperger told the Washington Post Graham had indicated he should find ways to toss out legal mail-in ballots.
      “It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said.
      Counties administer elections in Georgia, making Raffensperger powerless to do what Graham apparently wanted.
      “It was just an implication of, ‘Look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out,’” Raffensperger told CNN.
      Graham told the Hill the claim was “just ridiculous” and that “if he [felt] threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem.
      “I actually thought it was a good conversation,” the senator said, adding that he was “surprised to hear [Raffensperger] characterized it that way”.
      On Tuesday, Graham said he had spoken to election officials in several battleground states, where a dwindling group of Trump allies continue to push his baseless claims.
      “Yeah, I talked to Arizona, I talked to Nevada,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill.
      He was forced to clarify that he had spoken to the Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, not Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, after she said she had not spoken to Graham.
      Raffensperger has faced mounting criticism from his own party for defending the state’s electoral process. He told the Post he had received threatening messages from “people on [his] side of the aisle”, demanding that he “better not botch” the recount.
      Georgia’s two senators, David Perdue and Kelley Loeffler, have called for his resignation. Both face tight run-off elections.
      Graham’s alleged approach to Raffensperger prompted widespread criticism in the mainstream media.
      Writing for the Post, the conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin asked why Graham “would need to know this information and decide directly to contact Raffensperger.
      “Federal and/or state law enforcement should get to the bottom of this, requiring both parties to the conversation, and any witnesses, to preserve evidence. Graham’s actions have called into question his willingness to uphold the sanctity of elections.” More

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      Will Trump’s refusal to concede help his base turn out in Georgia’s runoffs?

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      Donald Trump’s refusal to admit defeat in the 2020 presidential election won’t stop President-elect Joe Biden from taking office in January. But it is having a lasting and divisive impact on the American electorate and that might be exactly what Republicans have in mind as they gear up for a Democratic White House.Biden has easily surpassed the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win the the presidency and he has won millions more raw votes than Trump. But Trump has refused to concede and while he has publicly – and baselessly – argued that the election results show widespread voter fraud favoring Democrats, the president has also reportedly queried advisers about additional ways to stall or stop his departure from office.Those options are increasingly unlikely yet Trump’s campaign team has also continued to file lawsuits and recounts in key states challenging how the vote-counting process happened. Similarly those lawsuits have been unsuccessful.But other political strategists and veterans of transitions see another incentive: keeping Republican voters energized for upcoming Senate elections in Georgia, which could decide which party controls the Senate in 2021.That thinking goes that if voters are still paying attention to politics through November and December instead of taking a break because major elections have been decided, they are more likely to donate and come out to vote in Georgia (if they live there).That is vital in that keeping control of the Senate will give Republicans a powerful weapon to hobble Biden, frustrating his policy agenda and even limiting who he can pick for his cabinet posts.The strategy – and the attendant creation of a powerful myth of a stolen election – could also serve to keep many Republican voters motivated in midterm elections in 2022 and eventually the next presidential election in 2024. It could help Republican aims of reducing the Democrats to a single term in the White House in which they will be unable to achieve major policies, especially if Republicans continue to win more House seats.This refusal to accept Biden’s victory to varying degrees has sparked a high level of concern among veterans of past presidential transitions.“I think that there’s some truth to that and there’s some truth to defending for the sake of defending it in order to, again, rally this portion of the base that are the diehards, which I think is a minority but it’s an important minority to the party,” said Beth Noveck, who served on the transition team for Barack Obama.“So what all of this means about the future of the Republican party and the direction it will take and the role Trump will play and the cult of personality, it’s a very calculated political move to keep the base energized and demonstrate the kind of ‘pitched battle’ mentality of the other guy is the enemy is to maintain that sort of, frankly, rather fascist position.”But some Republicans worry that the larger Republican universe focusing on arguing that the election is flawed could actually backfire in Georgia. They fear it could even depress Republican turnout in Georgia as voters might wonder ‘If that election wasn’t legitimate, why should the Georgia elections be different?’ and ultimately not come out to match a highly enthusiastic Democratic voter base.At the same time, other Republicans see Trump’s loss and the opportunity to reinforce Republican numbers in Congress as a motivator for voters.“The last four years the singular message for Democrats has largely been around President Trump and when he’s gone how much of a motivator is that for him? And while Georgia may have delivered an electoral victory to Biden it’s by such a narrow margin I don’t think that anyone can buy into the idea that these voters are also wanting to give Biden a blank checkbook by giving him both the House and the Senate,” said Republican strategist Tim Cameron.Cameron added that for Democrats, “the last four years their rallying cry has been Trump and Russia stole this election from them and subsequently we’ve seen record-level turnouts in 2018 and 2020 and I don’t know why why we expect this to be any different for Republicans now that Biden’s president. If anything it may lead to record levels of Republican turnout in 2022. It’s too soon to say that but I just wouldn’t discount this.”There are signs that Trump’s quixotic arguments against the election results are dividing the country, creating a mass of people who see the election of Biden as illegitimate even as millions of Democrats celebrate his win.A recent Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 70% of Republicans don’t feel the election was free and fair. Only a few Republican lawmakers have openly acknowledged Biden as the legitimate victor out of the presidential election, most have either said that the outcome of the election is still unclear or that Trump is within his rights to wait until every last vote is counted, including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, the highest-ranking Republican in the chamber.Here’s how this must work in our great country: Every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes.That’s how Americans’ votes decide the result.— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) November 6, 2020
      The Republican National Committee, the main political arm for the president, has been encouraging these arguments as well. RNC talking points obtained by the Guardian urge supporters to argue that “The fight is not over. President Trump will continue to fight for us, and we will continue to fight for him” and “allowing these recounts and lawsuits to run their course will ensure that all Americans can be confident of the results of the election”. More

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      Georgia’s secretary of state says Lindsey Graham suggested he throw out legal ballots

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      Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has said that Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether it was possible to invalidate legally cast ballots after Donald Trump was narrowly defeated in the state.
      In an interview with the Washington Post, Raffensperger said that his fellow Republican, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, questioned him about the state’s signature-matching law and asked whether political bias might have played a role in counties where poll workers accepted higher rates of mismatched signatures. According to Raffensperger, Graham then asked whether he had the authority to toss out all mail-in ballots in these counties.
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      Raffensperger was reportedly “stunned” by the question, in which Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to throw out legally cast absentee ballots.
      “It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said.
      Graham confirmed the conversation to reporters on Capitol Hill but said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that he pressured Raffensperger to throw out legally cast absentee ballots. According to Graham, he only wanted to learn more about the process for verifying signatures, because what happens in Georgia “affects the whole nation”.
      “I thought it was a good conversation,” Graham said on Monday after the interview was published. “I’m surprised to hear he characterized it that way.”
      Trump has refused to accept results showing Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, falsely blaming rampant fraud and irregularities that election officials in both parties have dismissed as meritless.

      Georgia, a reliably Republican state with 16 electoral votes, is currently conducting a hand recount of roughly 5m presidential ballots, which is expected to be completed by 20 November. Biden led in the state by about 14,000 votes after the initial tally.
      This comes as Raffensperger faces mounting backlash from his own party after defending the state’s electoral process. The state’s two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both locked in tight run-off elections to keep their seats, have called for Raffensperger’s resignation – calls that Raffensperger has dismissed.
      Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia, who is spearheading the president’s effort to prove fraud in the state, has also been critical of Raffensperger, accusing him of siding with Democrats because he refused to endorse the false claim that the election was stolen from Trump. In the interview, Raffensperger called Collins, who has not contested the result of the special election race he lost to Loeffler, a “liar” and a “charlatan”.
      Raffensperger said every accusation of voter fraud would be thoroughly vetted but there was currently no credible evidence that wrongdoing had occurred on a large enough scale to affect the outcome of the election. He also told the Post that the recount would “affirm” the results of the initial count and prove the accuracy of the Dominion voting machines, which Trump has falsely claimed deleted votes cast for him.
      Voting rights and ethics groups condemned Graham’s comments, and some called for his resignation as chair of the Senate judiciary committee.
      “Not only is it wrong for Senator Graham to apparently contemplate illegal behavior, but his suggestion undermines the integrity of our elections and the faith of the American people in our democracy,” said Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in a statement. “Under the guise of rooting out election fraud, it looks like Graham is suggesting committing it.” More

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      Democratic candidates say Georgia Senate elections will be decisive for US

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      In separate interviews on Sunday, the two Democratic candidates for US Senate in Georgia said their runoff elections in January would be decisive for America’s future.
      If Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock beat their Republican incumbent opponents, Democrats will regain control of the Senate, Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vice-president in a chamber split 50-50. Though precarious, that would give Joe Biden greater hope of implementing his legislative agenda.
      Democrats hold the US House but fear a Republican-controlled Senate would hamper everything from a nationwide Covid-19 response to economic stimulus initiatives. Republicans fear losing a vital foothold on Capitol Hill. As a result, tens of millions of dollars are flowing into Georgia, where Ossoff will face David Perdue and Warnock will face Kelly Loeffler in the 5 January runoffs, necessitated by no candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote this month.
      “Trump is leaving, whether he knows it or not,” Ossoff told ABC’s This Week, referring to the president’s refusal to concede defeat by Biden. “And the question now is how we’re going to contain this pandemic which is raging out of control, which is spreading at an accelerating rate.”
      Ossoff won 48% of the vote to Perdue’s 49.7%. The remainder went to a Libertarian who is now out of the race.
      “There are hundreds of thousands of lives hanging in the balance, there are millions of jobs and homes and livelihoods hanging in the balance,” Ossoff said. “And that’s why it’s so important to win these two Senate races so that the incoming presidential administration can govern, can lead, can enact the solutions necessary to contain this virus and invest in economic recovery.”
      Georgia went to Biden in the presidential election, a recount unlikely to change the result. Crediting former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ organizing efforts for shifting Georgia’s vote – no Democratic presidential candidate had won the state since 1996 – Ossoff said: “What we’re feeling for the first time in four years is hope.
      “With Trump departing, we have the opportunity to define the next chapter in American history, to lead out of this crisis. But only by winning these Senate seats.
      “The GOP at the national level has no leader, has no message and has no vision other than stopping Joe Biden. But we are in a crisis, we need leadership, we need to make sure that Joe Biden can govern and this administration is successful.”
      Warnock, a pastor, won 33% of the vote over Loeffler’s 26%, with the rest going to other candidates including Doug Collins, a Republican US representative. In total, Democratic candidates polled 35.7% and Republicans 45.8%. Warnock told CNN’s State of the Union that did not worry him.
      “I finished first, handily, far ahead of a candidate who’s the wealthiest member of Congress, who poured millions of dollars into this race,” he said.
      “And we finished in a strong position. There’s no question in my mind that as Georgians hear about my commitment to access to affordable healthcare, the dignity of work, the work I’ve been doing for years standing up for ordinary people, we will prevail come 5 January.”
      The CNN host Jake Tapper pointed out that Republicans have tried to link Warnock to Democrats in Washington, to cast him as a dangerous radical.
      “Listen,” Warnock said. “This is a Georgia race. And I’m Georgia. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, my church is in Atlanta. I’m pastor of the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr.
      “I grew up in public housing, one of 12 children in my family. I’m number 11. And the first graduate of a four-year college in my family. I know personally the importance of good federal policy, combined with personal responsibility, work, grit and determination. That’s the reason I’m able to run for the United States Senate. I am an iteration of the American dream.
      “I’m running for the Senate because that promise is slipping away from far too many people. That’s what this race is about … and that’s what I can take, I will continue to lift up. Even as I move across the great state of Georgia, people are responding to that message.” More

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      ‘They know their vote matters’: the Georgia Senate runoffs battle is already on

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      Donald Trump may have forced a recount of the votes in Georgia that helped end his presidency, but the activists who organised the surge in turnout that helped defeat him have already turned their attention to two elections that will decide who controls the US Senate and the course of Joe Biden’s presidency.
      Tens of millions of dollars are pouring in to the Georgia runoff races, which can be expected to draw Biden back to the campaign trail as voters have the opportunity to make history by defeating the state’s two Republican senators to give the new president control of both houses of Congress.
      Traditionally, turnout has been low for runoff elections and that has favoured Republicans. But the presidential race in Georgia has already turned conventional political wisdom on its head. A concerted get out the vote campaign over recent years, combined with a surge of political engagement by younger people over demands for racial justice, narrowly swung the state for Biden. More

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      Latinos could swing Georgia. Don't repeat the mistakes of Florida and Texas | Chuck Rocha

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      In less than eight weeks, voters of the now-blue state of Georgia will head to the polls to vote in the Senate runoff election on 5 January 2021 to decide if the Rev Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will join their Democratic colleagues in Congress. These two seats are crucial to deliver the mandate needed by Joe Biden to enact his ambitious vision for America’s future.
      With the Democratic party’s hopes and dreams resting on Georgia’s shoulders, it would be a costly misstep to overlook a key demographic: Latinos. There are nearly a million Latinos living in Georgia, the majority of whom live in and around the Atlanta metro area. About 300,000 persuadable Latino voters who are registered to vote identify as neither Democrat nor Republican. These voters represent a small but decisive 5% of the electorate. In a world in which races are won on razor-thin margins, that 5% is a crucial swing vote.
      In the days leading up to the 2020 general election, I watched my colleagues’ hopes rise at the sight of a string of polls showing Biden with the lead in Florida and record-breaking early voter turnout in my home state of Texas. These hopes were quickly dashed. In the wake of defeat, my phone started to buzz with people asking, urgently: what went wrong with the Latino vote? It was the first time in my 30 years of political experience that the nation finally learned a truth that Latino organizers have been trying to convey for ages. We are not a monolith and you must ask us for our vote if you want to earn our vote.
      Let’s set the record straight: President-elect Joe Biden won Latino voters. He spent more money engaging with Latino voters in his 2020 campaign than either Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton. This investment paid off for Biden, with decisive Latino victories in the states he focused on competing in, including Florida.
      By now, we have all heard about the heroine of Georgia’s historic blue shift. Stacey Abrams’ unprecedented grassroots voter registration and mobilization efforts have unequivocally proven that the antidote to poisonous voter suppression tactics and lagging voter engagement involves two key ingredients: both statewide and community-led operations.
      Fair Fight Action was responsible for the registration of over 800,000 voters in Georgia – a force to be reckoned with in the once reliably red south. This level of mobilization, focused on Latinos, will be critical to swing the Georgia special election toward Democrats and clinch these two remaining Senate seats.
      Every 30 seconds in America, a Latino turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote. Over half of Georgia’s Latino population is under the age of 18. This means there are thousands of Latino youth in Georgia who will turn 18 on or before 5 January who qualify to register to vote in the Senate elections. This is in addition to hundreds of thousands of Latinos already over the age of 18 who are currently unregistered to vote.
      The registration deadline for all Georgians who wish to vote in the runoff elections is less than a month away, on 7 December. These next three weeks present a small window of opportunity for Democrats to expand their electorate. Emerging Latino populations can and will tip the balance in this election.
      Latino organizers and groups on the ground such as Galeo, a non-profit that helps register new Latino voters across Georgia, need funding and resources right now in order to mobilize Latinos in large enough numbers to swing the state. Over the past four months, Nuestro Pac – now the largest Latino-focused Super Pac, which I helped found – spent over $5m to galvanize Latino voters for Biden in swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. These efforts helped deliver the margins of victory for Biden in many of the states he won.
      Georgia presents an enormous opportunity for Democrats, in part because the unique nuances of Latino voters in Texas and Florida, who are culturally distinct from elsewhere, are not present to the same extent in Georgia. The most pressing issue for Latinos in Georgia – and Latinos in general – is Covid relief funds, which are currently being held hostage by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Healthcare is a similarly critical issue for Latinos in Georgia – yet the Republican party has voted over 50 times to strip Americans of health protections provided by the Affordable Care Act, and are trying to defeat it through the supreme court.
      Through the appointment of a new and diverse Covid-19 taskforce, Biden has already taken a crucial first step to instill confidence in these voters. Now it is time for investment in grassroots organizing so that Latinos can deliver Biden a mandate.
      Chuck Rocha is the president of Solidarity Strategies and the founder of Nuestro Pac. He was a senior adviser to the Bernie Sanders campaign More