DeKalb County now plans to certify its Nov. 3 election results on Thursday afternoon, a day earlier than originally scheduled.
Officials said the move will allow the county to more quickly turn its focus to a statewide recount of the presidential race, which was ordered Wednesday by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
According to the Secretary of State’s website, DeKalb was one of about 61 Georgia counties that had yet to certify their elections results as of Wednesday afternoon.
That list included several major metro Atlanta jurisdictions. Representatives from Cobb and Fulton counties said they planned to certify Friday, as originally scheduled. Fayette County was also scheduled to certify on Friday.
Current, unofficial statewide results have Democrat Joe Biden with a roughly 14,000-vote lead over Donald Trump in Georgia.
DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond said Raffensperger’s decision to call for a manual recount of the presidential race was “unfortunate, unexpected and possibly unnecessary.” But he said he expects DeKalb will be up to the task.
“Obviously it’s uncharted water, but I have every confidence that we will get the job done,” Thurmond said. “It’s clear that our elections officials up until this point have comported themselves well and I have no doubt that they’ll rise and meet this challenge.”
DeKalb’s rescheduled election board meeting will now take place at 1 p.m. Thursday. It will be conducted via Zoom and the public can watch on DeKalb County TV’s UStream channel.
Public comment can also be submitted by sending an email of one page or less to electionspubliccmnt@dekalbcountyga.gov. Emails must be received between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Thursday and include the commenter’s first and last name and address.
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