ATLANTA — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday announced he would accept the election results showing Joe Biden won the presidential race against President Trump by more than 12,000 votes in the Peach State, one of the closest margins in the country.
Kemp, speaking from the Georgia Capitol, added that the certification “paves the way for the Trump campaign to pursue other legal options and a separate recount.”
Georgia’s election has been saddled with accusations of voter fraud and ugly party infighting.
Biden flipped the once-reliably red state blue with 2.47 million votes, compared to Trump’s 2.46 million. Libertarian Jo Jorgensen pulled in 62,138 votes. Biden beat Trump by a margin of 12,670 votes, or 0.25 points. He is the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state’s 16 Electoral College votes in nearly three decades.
The result of the six-day hand recount of the state’s 159 counties had been widely expected despite unsupported allegations from Trump’s campaign and Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue that the results should be doubted because of widespread fraud.
They have also accused Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a lifelong Republican, of trying to help Democrats cheat, an accusation he has strongly denied.
The Trump campaign has two business days to request a machine recount under state law. If it does, Georgia taxpayers will foot the bill.
Kemp, who has been largely silent throughout the election process, was also a frequent target of Trump, who accused him of not towing the party line.
Kemp mostly kept quiet during the recount process despite being called out by his own party.
During his press conference, Kemp also criticized errors in the state’s voting system as well as county officials who overlooked nearly 6,000 ballots that were found in the hand count. Those ballots reduced Trump’s deficit by 1,400 votes.
“We cannot have lost memory cards or stacks of uncounted ballots,” he said. “Every legal vote must be counted, and the security of the ballot box must be protected.”
Earlier at the state Capitol, Raffensperger, whose family has received death threats, declared: “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,” he said. “The numbers reflect the verdict of the people, not a decision by the secretary of state’s office, or of courts, or of either campaign.”
