Year In Review: Presidential Race and Recount

In the Presidential race, President Donald Trump easily won the votes in Northeast Georgia and most rural Georgia counties, but in a stunning and unexpected upset, lost the state to Democrat challenger Joe Biden. 

 

President Donald Trump picked only a handful of votes in Franklin and Hart counties during the hand recount of the Presidential ballots.

 

Trump then asked for a hand recount of the ballots statewide, but the difference wasn’t enough to overturn the election results overall and give him the state.

 

In Franklin County, Elections Supervisor Gina Kesler said the hand recount gave Trump 9,072 up from the November 3 total of 9,069, and for Joe Biden 1,589 – down from the election night total of 1,593.

 

In Hart County, the results were similar in that Trump picked up several more votes and Biden lost several, according to Hart County Elections Supervisor Robin Webb.

 

Trump then asked for a second recount – this time the machine recount, which took place on November 30th state wide. 

 

However, the final results of the second Presidential recount for Franklin and Hart counties showed no change in the results from the November 3 election.

 

Meantime, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the number of absentee ballot rejections for signature issues increased approximately 350% in the November 2020 election in Georgia from the 2018 election, about the same rate of increase as the total number of absentee ballots accepted.

 

2,011 absentee ballots were rejected in the November 2020 election for missing or non-matching signatures out of just over 1.3 million absentee ballots cast.

 

In the 2020 Primary, 3,266 absentee ballot were rejected for missing or non-matching signatures out of just over 1.1 million absentee ballots cast, a rejection rate of 0.28%.