DeKalb County recertified its recount of the Nov. 3 presidential election Friday morning, affirming that Democrat Joe Biden won the county by a hefty margin, but was unable to explain a roughly 70-vote difference from its earlier recounts.
The DeKalb County Board of Registers & Elections voted unanimously to recertify the recount, which was requested two weekends ago by the campaign of outgoing President Donald Trump.
About 373,000 DeKalb County voters cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election. The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office had set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. last Wednesday for counties to complete their recounts, which came on the heels of an earlier manual audit of the presidential race.
DeKalb had to recertify the results due to a roughly 70-vote discrepancy from the prior count following a statewide audit.
“There was a margin of error, and by law if there was a change in vote totals, we have to recertify the elections,” Erica Hamilton, the Director of the DeKalb BOE, said during the virtual meeting. “We are not the only county that has to recertify its election results ... it’s a very small margin.”
Hamilton said her office was not able to determine the source of that discrepancy, saying that ballots were moved “several times” during the multiple recounting efforts. The latest recount took place in Stonecrest starting Nov. 24 and took the county about five days to complete, Hamilton said. Employees received Thanksgiving and last Sunday off.
Hamilton added that it’s unclear whether the error was caused by humans or machines.
“(The discrepancy) bothered me,” she said. “I had staff searching, searching, searching. It’s the first time we’ve done this with the new Dominion (voting) system, and I hope that if we have a recount in January, we’re able to alleviate this.”
Anthony Lewis, one of the two Republicans on the board, voiced his concerns about the error before voting to recertify the presidential election results.
“This is the first time since I’ve been on this board where I’ve felt nervous about a recertification,” he said. “...We can’t answer the public. If someone comes up to me and asks what happened, I have nothing to tell them.”
The prior manual audit, which was ordered by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, led to 95 omitted ballots being discovered in DeKalb. The incident led to an elections manager’s firing.
The latest recount effort is not expected to impact the outcome of the presidential race in Georgia, which Biden won by about 12,000 votes.
How DeKalb County voted for president
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