ATLANTA -- Georgia's secretary of state Wednesday announced an audit of presidential election results that he said would consist of a full hand count of ballots because the margin is so tight.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a news conference that his office wants the process to begin by the end of the week, and he expects it to take until Nov. 20, which is the state certification deadline.
"It will be a heavy lift, but we will work with the counties to get this done in time for our state certification," Raffensperger said, flanked by local election officials on the steps of the state Capitol. "We have all worked hard to bring fair and accurate counts to assure that the will of the voters is reflected in the final count and that every voter will have confidence in the outcome, whether their candidate won or lost."
Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by more than 14,000 votes out of almost 5 million cast in the state. Counties have until Friday to certify their results.
Trump, who honored veterans in a ceremony Wednesday, has made no public comments since Biden was reported as the winner of the presidential contest.
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Meanwhile, Trump's legal team has filed a barrage of lawsuits alleging voting fraud in the battleground states that went for Biden.
The president's refusal to concede has stalled the transition process as the head of the General Services Administration, a Trump appointee, has held off on certifying Biden as the winner of the election.
Biden on Wednesday quietly pushed forward with the business of preparing to become America's next commander in chief.
Biden chose his longtime adviser Ron Klain to reprise his role as his chief of staff.
Klain served as the coordinator to the Ebola response during the 2014 outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday night, Biden suggested he chose Klain for the position because Klain's longtime experience in Washington had prepared him for such challenges.
"His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again," Biden said.
Biden stepped away from his planning earlier Wednesday to honor the nation's fallen soldiers for a Veterans Day tribute at the Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, Georgia's two U.S. senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, earlier this week called on Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to resign over unspecified claims of election mismanagement. Both face close runoff elections in January. Raffensperger said he wouldn't step down and assured the public there had been no widespread problems.
The audit is a new requirement put in place by a law passed in 2019 that also provided for the new voting machines purchased last year. The state has chosen to do a risk-limiting audit, which involves checking a random sample of ballots by hand against results produced by vote-tallying equipment for accuracy. In such audits, the smaller the margin between candidates in a race, the larger the sample of ballots that must initially be audited.
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It was up to Raffensperger to choose which race to audit. He chose the presidential race and said the tight margin means that the audit will effectively result in a full hand recount.
Asked if he chose the presidential race because of the Trump campaign's call for a hand recount, Raffensperger said, "No, we're doing this because it's really what makes the most sense with the national significance of this race and the closeness of this race."
For the audit, county election staff members will work with the paper ballots in batches, dividing them into piles for each candidate. Then they will run the piles through machines to count the number of ballots for each candidate. The scanners will not read the data on the ballots, but will simply count them.
The secretary of state's office has said that any time ballots are recounted, the outcome is likely to be slightly different. If the vote tallies differ from what was previously recorded by the counties, it is the results of the audit that will be certified by the state.
Chris Harvey, the elections director in the secretary of state's office, said the agency will have a call with county election officials today to go over training requirements and expectations. He said counties will likely begin the audit process that afternoon or Friday morning.
Raffensperger said the process will have "plenty of oversight," with both parties having the opportunity to observe.
There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Biden's lead stood at 0.28 percentage points as of Wednesday afternoon.
Once the results from the audit are certified, the losing campaign can then request that recount, which will be done using scanners that read and tally the votes, Raffensperger said.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican who's leading Trump's legal efforts in Georgia, called the coming audit a "first step." He noted that the Trump campaign had requested a hand recount.
Collins denied that Republican demands for greater scrutiny of Georgia's vote were politically motivated to fire up GOP voters ahead of the state's two Senate runoffs Jan. 5.
"Look, I don't think anybody in their right mind would think we don't have enough attention paid on Georgia right now," Collins said. "I don't think motivation or turnout is a problem in Georgia."
In addition to the audit of the presidential race, Raffensperger announced that he's consolidating runoff elections. A runoff for any state races was set to be held Dec. 1, while the runoffs for the two U.S. Senate races was set for Jan. 5. Raffensperger said he's consolidating those runoffs on Jan. 5.
The Senate runoffs will decide which party controls that chamber.
The deadlock became official after Republicans held the Senate seat in Alaska. There, incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan defeated Al Gross, an independent running as a Democrat, after an onslaught of mail-in ballots delayed counting until Tuesday, a week after Election Day. A short while later, North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis defeated Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham.
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Separately, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Trump the "previous president" of the United States and said it was "refreshing" to talk to Biden.
Johnson congratulated Biden on his election victory in a phone call Tuesday.
He told British lawmakers on Wednesday that he and Biden discussed plans to "stick up for NATO and to work together in the fight against climate change" -- issues on which Trump and the British leader have starkly different views.
Johnson said it was "refreshing" to have that conversation, and he looks forward to "many more."
He said he has had "a good relationship with the previous president," and it's "the duty of all prime ministers to have a good relationship with the White House."
Information for this article was contributed by Russ Bynum, Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani, Lisa Mascaro, Steve Peoples, Will Weissert, Mary Clare Jalonick, Alexandra Jaffe and Deb Reichmann of The Associated Press.
