The unprecedented task of manually recounting nearly 5 million ballots cast by Georgia voters in this month’s presidential election came to an end Monday in nearly all of metro Atlanta’s core counties.
Fayette County completed its tabulation, joining Fulton and DeKalb which wrapped up their recounts Sunday.
Ballots are still being counted in Cobb, Clayton, Henry and Gwinnett counties. No irregularities or significant tabulation errors have emerged during the first three days of the recount, officials said.
Cobb spokesman Ross Cavitt told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 384,000 ballots cast in the county for the presidential election have been uploaded to the state system. The county stopped its recount at 6 p.m. and will start recounting the remaining 12,000 ballots Tuesday morning.
The review panel on Tuesday will also begin adjudicating 5,000 ballots that are in dispute. That process could stretch into Wednesday, Cavitt said.
“But we will easily make the deadline,” he said state deadline of midnight Wednesday.
Gwinnett elections director Kristi Royston said the county was expected to finish counting Monday evening. She did not have an estimate for how much the recount will cost taxpayers. She said the state could help counties with funding through the Help America Vote Act, but that wasn’t set in stone.
In neighboring DeKalb County, which had to sift through about 40,000 fewer presidential ballots than Gwinnett, officials estimated the recount would cost around $180,000.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered the recount last Wednesday. At stake are Georgia’s 16 votes in the Electoral College, which is scheduled cast them on Dec. 14.
As of Monday, former Vice President Joe Biden held a statewide lead of about 14,000 votes over President Donald Trump.
The recount requires human review of nearly 5 million ballots, which have been stacked into piles sorted by candidate and tallied in each county. The deadline for Georgia’s election results to be certified by Raffensperger is Nov. 20.
In Floyd County, the recount uncovered about 2,600 new votes in the presidential election, the AJC has reported on Monday. The votes were cast during the in-person early voting period at the Floyd County Administration Building, which includes the county’s elections office, said Luke Martin, chairman of the Floyd County Republican Party. Over half of 5,000 printed-out ballots cast on an optical scanning machine weren’t initially recorded. Floyd County elections officials have not responded to requests for comment.
Results for all of Georgia’s 159 counties will be released all at once after every county finishes.
AJC reporter Mark Niesse contributed to this report.
