US Presidential Election: Recount In Georgia Uncovers Over 2600 Uncounted Ballots In Trump-Leaning Floyd County

More than 2,600 votes that weren’t previously included in the state’s overall tally of ballots in the presidential election have been uncovered in Georgia during the recount process, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

2,600 ballots in the Republican-leaning Floyd County that hadn’t originally been tallied is likely to help President Donald Trump reduce his 14,000-vote deficit to Joe Biden. The problem is said to have occurred because county election officials failed to upload votes from a memory card in an ballot scanning machine.

Trump is set to gain nearly 800 net votes from the discovered ballots with 1,643 new votes for the incumbent president and 865 for Biden.

AJC report quoted Gabriel Sterling, who serves as Georgia’s voting system manager, as saying that the mishap was the result of human error, not equipment issues.

Sterling characterised the omission as “an amazing blunder”.

“It’s not an equipment issue. It’s a person not executing their job properly.”  he told the paper.

“This is the kind of situation that requires a change at the top of their management side,” he continued while also calling on the local county’s elections director to step down.

The development is unlikely to change the projected outcome of the presidential election in Georgia, where Joe Biden has been projected as the winner by multiple media outlets.

On Nov 10, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that the state would carry out a full recount of the presidential race by hand. Election workers are currently performing a by-hand recount and simultaneous audit of the results, which must be completed before the results are certified on November 20.

Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both Republicans, have called for Raffensperger to resign over what they alleged were “mismanagement and lack of transparency” regarding the election. Both senators are facing runoff elections on January 5, and if they both lose, Republicans and Democrats will be tied 50-50 in the Senate.