DONE DEAL

‘Numbers Don’t Lie’: Georgia’s Secretary of State Officially Certifies Election Results

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he was “pro-Trump” but couldn’t ignore the clear results of the Nov. 3 election.

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the results of the Nov. 3 election on Friday, confirming Joe Biden as the winner of the once-red state.

Georgia conducted a hand recount due to the close results, but it only confirmed that Biden won by more than 12,000 votes. On Friday morning, Raffensperger, who has come under extraordinary pressure from Trump fanatics to ignore the legitimate result, said he was a Trump supporter and a lifelong conservative but couldn’t ignore the result. “Like other Republicans, I’m disappointed our candidate didn’t win,” he said. “Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by the motto that numbers don’t lie. As secretary of state, I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct. The numbers reflect the verdict of the people.”

The certification was not without drama. Raffensperger’s office sent out a press release on Friday say the certification was complete but then, an hour later, issued a correction to say it wasn’t just yet. By 4 p.m., it was finally done. Now Gov. Brian Kemp has until 5 p.m. Saturday to certify the state’s 16 electors. The Trump campaign has two business days to request a machine recount, given that the margin of victory was within 0.5 percentage points.