The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office says it’s investigating Coffee County’s handling of the November presidential election recount.
All counties were to finish the third tally of votes in the presidential election by midnight Dec. 2. But Coffee County was still trying to resolve a discrepancy of 50 votes the following day, the secretary of state said in announcing the investigation late Wednesday.
By Dec. 4 Coffee was the only county that had not completed the recount. The county notified the secretary of state that it would not certify the results.
The discrepancy was not enough to change the result of the presidential election in Georgia. Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million ballots cast.
According to the Secretary of State’s Office, Coffee County blamed the state’s Dominion Voting System for its vote discrepancy, but the county elections director could not specify what problems were encountered.
“Every other county was able to complete this task within the given time limits,” the state said in announcing the investigation. “In some cases, counties realized they made mistakes in scanning ballots and had to rescan, or realized they neglected to scan some ballots and had to correct that error. But nonetheless, those counties completed the recount on time.
“The Secretary of State’s Office will investigate Coffee County for their recount procedures and ascertain if the case needs to be brought to the State Election Board for review and potential action,” the agency said.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has already called for the firing of two county election directors in connection with the November election. Last month he called out problems in Floyd County, and the election board there later fired the county election director.
Last week, Raffensperger’s office called for the firing of Spalding County’s election director after the county had difficulties on Election Day.
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