Three Vote Counts and Two Certifications Later Joe Biden is Still the Winner of Georgia

Joe Biden has officially been declared the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes—again.

On Monday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recertified the results of the November 3 election confirming Biden’s win. The final results showed Biden ahead of President Donald Trump by 11,779 votes.This was the second time Georgia’s top officials certified Biden’s victory in the 2020 race. The Democrat was originally named the winner on November 20. At the time, Biden led by a margin of 12,670 votes, or 0.25 percent, over Trump.

The president, who has tirelessly attacked state officials over their handling of the race, unsurprisingly requested a recount. The state was required to accept the request since the initial results were within one percent.

The recount marked the third time more than 5 million votes were counted in the Peach State.”We have now counted legally cast ballots three times and the results have remained unchanged,” Raffensperger said at a news conference on Monday morning.

He added, “It’s time we all focus on the future and growth. I know there are people that are convinced the election was fraught with problems but the evidence—the actual evidence, the facts—tell us a different story.”The secretary of state had previously ordered a manual hand recount of all ballots cast in the presidential race in the state, stating it would “help build confidence” in the results. The audit also upheld the original outcome of a Biden win produced by the machine tally of votes cast.

While Republican state officials defend the integrity of the election, Trump and his allies have continued to spread baseless allegations that the process was riddled with fraud. He called the manual recount a “joke” and has filed multiple lawsuits challenging the state’s results.

Amid the president’s unfounded allegations of fraud, election workers have reported being threatened. Last week, one Georgia official lashed out at Trump’s dangerous post-election behavior.

“It has to stop,” Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said at a news conference on December 1. He called on the president to condemn the violence.

“Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed,” Sterling added. “And it’s not right.”Raffensperger expressed support for Sterling’s statement, telling reporters that even after his office requested Trump “quell the violent rhetoric being born out of his continued claims of winning the states where he obviously lost,” the president kept going with his attacks.

“This is exactly the kind of language that is the base of a growing threat environment for election workers who are doing their jobs,” he said.

The former vice president is the first Democratic nominee to win Georgia since Bill Clinton did it in 1992. The party is hoping to repeat his victory in a pair of Senate runoff elections next month that will determine majority control of the upper chamber in the next Congress.