Georgia Secretary of State to Certify Biden Win

Editor’s Note: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger issued a correction Friday afternoon, saying that his office had prematurely announced the vote certification, which will in fact occur later in the day.

Georgia has certified Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election in the state, following a by-hand recount that confirmed Biden’s victory.

While over 2,000 votes for President Trump were discovered during the recount, Biden won by a margin of 12,284 votes.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “affirmed that all 159 counties have provided to the state the total votes tabulated for each state and federal candidate,” the secretary’s office said in a statement. “Further, the Secretary of State affirms that the statewide consolidated returns…are a true and correct tabulation of the certified returns received by this office from each county.”

Biden’s razor-thin victory marks the first time since 1992 that Georgia voters chose a Democratic presidential candidate.

The president has alleged that Democrats “stole” the election for Biden by means of widespread voter fraud, however the Trump campaign has not contested enough ballots to be able to overturn the election results. Republican allies of the president, among them Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue and failed Senate candidate Doug Collins, have alleged that Raffensperger mishandled the election and called on him to resign.

Raffensperger has hit back at those allegations, slamming Republican infighting in an interview with National Review on Wednesday.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and sometimes we hear young people say that we eat our own,” Raffensperger said. “We expect Democrats to take swipes at us all the time, but when we take swipes at each other, and that’s what we’re doing right now, the Democrats can just sit back and enjoy the show, buy a box of popcorn, and just see how much we destroy each other.”