Georgia Conducted a Hand Count Audit of Its Election Results. Guess What it Found?

You may recall a bit of a pre-election hullabaloo over Georgia's plan to hand count votes.  A judge determined that the state's new elections rule was untenable, in a late October order: "After Georgia voters began heading to the polls Tuesday for the first day of early voting in the state, a judge enjoined election officials from moving forward with a controversial new rule that would require the hand counting of ballots when polls close on Nov. 5," CBS News reported at the time.  "Judge Robert McBurney called the rule 'too much, too late.' ...The hand count rule and others were passed in September by the five-person State Election Board on a 3-2 vote, pushed through by a trio of supporters of former President Donald Trump. The rule would require precinct poll managers and poll officers to unseal ballot boxes and count the ballots by hand individually to ensure the tallies match the machine-counted ballot totals."

What Georgia actually ended up doing, it seems, was to complete a post-election count-by-hand audit of the machine-counted election results -- reviewing approximately three-quarters-of-a-million ballots (out of more than five million cast in the state) after the fact, to compare them to the original tallies.  The results found microscopically negligible shifts in votes:

A hand-count audit of Georgia’s presidential election reported miniscule discrepancies from the machine count, confirming President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. The results of the manual review released Wednesday showed 11 more votes for Trump and six fewer for Harris out of nearly 750,000 ballots reviewed by election officials across the state. “Georgia’s election systems are our nation’s best,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “This audit shows that our system works and that our county election officials conducted a secure, accurate election — they are the cream of the crop.” The tiny difference between the two ballot counts was largely caused by human error during the hand-counting process, Raffensperger said.

Trump gained 17 net votes, a rounding error of a rounding error. His overall victory margin in the Peach State was roughly 117,000. Hats off to Georgia for running a strong, secure election, which also boasted record turnout levels:

A record 5.29 million Georgia voters turned out in this year’s election, shattering the previous high set four years ago. About 64% of registered voters participated in the race, with a majority of them supporting Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump received nearly 117,000 more votes than Harris, a 2% margin of victory.

Four years ago, just shy of five million Georgians voted in the presidential election. That number soared by hundreds of thousands in 2024, after the state implemented a voter intergrity and reform law that dishonest critics labeled a "voter suppression" scheme. Since the supposed "suppression" measures took effect, Georgia has administered a midterm and presidential election in which new turnout records were set. Those who lied and demagogued about this -- the revolting 'Jim Crow on steroids' crowd, from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris to Stacey Abrams to both Democratic US Senators from Georgia -- should be ashamed and embarrassed. So should the corporate players who went along with the racial fear-mongering, including Major League Baseball and Delta Airlines.  Incredibly, two-time loser and election denier (whose election denial raised her status among Democrats, who profess to care deeply about "democracy" and accepting election results) Stacey Abrams is still blubbering incoherently about her stupid, mendacious conspiracy theory:

Despite record voter turnout thus far in Georgia, ⁦@staceyabrams⁩ says “that does not mean there is not voter suppression activity.” pic.twitter.com/ui9h7eSUjl

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 1, 2024

Speaking of election deniers and sore losers, Bob Casey's pitiful refusal to admit that he lost his Senate election to Republican Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania has pushed the Commonwealth into a costly and time-consuming recount, which will not change the outcome. McCormick won by a margin in the ballpark of 20,000 votes (the number has bounced around), and recounts very rarely move the needle at all.  The multi-million-dollar recount has thus far moved the totals single digits:

As more counties report over the next few days (the recount must end by mid-week next week), the totals will move around at the fractional margins, but the outcome will remain the same: Dave McCormick is Senator-elect, Bob Casey has lost.  He finally woke up to realtiy last night, with one last middle finger, given the timing of this:

Also, the people who tried to steal the election by openly violating the law should be in real trouble.  Their corruption won't carry the day, but it has infuriated the state Supreme Court (which issued a 7-0 ruling slapping them down), as well as many citizens:

Lawless Casey donor and Bucks County Democratic Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia should really have a problem on her hands, despite her damage-control apology. I'll leave you with another note out of Georgia, where the popular Republican governor's strong ground game (which help him crush Abrams in 2022) was valuable to the entire ticket this year.  This is good news for the party:

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