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Georgia election officials to give update on hand recount of ballots cast in presidential race

ATLANTA (NewsNation Now) — A Georgia election official said Tuesday morning that the hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race would be complete by Wednesday evening.

“We feel like we’re on a good path,” said Gabriel Sterling with Georgia’s Secretary of State Office. “The audit is on pace.”

Sterling said the by-hand recount is so the state can move to certify its election results. Once certified, the losing campaign can request a recount, which would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes. The AP has not declared a winner in Georgia, where Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 0.3 percentage points.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did not attend Tuesday morning’s news conference. Trump and his allies have criticized Raffensperger, saying that mismanagement and fraud tainted the state’s presidential election.

Over the weekend, Trump posted on social

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788K absentee ballots requested ahead of Georgia runoff elections

A record 788,535 people have requested ballots ahead of the two run-off elections on Jan. 5 that will decide control of the US Senate, Georgia’s secretary of state’s office tells The Post.

The figure, the latest number as of Tuesday morning, amounts to nearly three times the number of ballots requested during the 2018 midterms, when just under 285,000 votes were cast by absentee.

On Monday, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the state Election Board voted to extend the use of 24/7 ballot drop boxes for use during the run-offs. The boxes were set to expire in late December.

All eyes have focused on two Senate battles in Georgia, both with GOP incumbents. The current balance of the Senate is 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats, meaning that whichever way these two seats go will decide which party controls the upper chamber of Congress.

If Democrats were to win

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Lindsey Graham pressured Georgia’s secretary of state about legally cast ballots, report says

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots, a question he interpreted as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes.

Raffensperger made the comments to The Washington Post, saying he’s faced rising pressure from fellow Republicans who want to see Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead in the state reversed. Nearly 5 million votes were cast in the presidential election in Georgia, and Biden was leading President Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes.

Raffensperger’s comments came as election officials across the state were working to complete a hand recount of votes in the presidential race.

When Georgia voters return an absentee ballot, they have to sign an oath on an outer envelope. County election office workers are required to ensure the signature matches the one on the absentee ballot application

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A group of Pennsylvania Republicans are suing to try to invalidate millions of mail-in ballots and stop the state from certifying the election results



Donald Trump standing in front of a crowd: President Donald Trump and Congressman Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) embrace at an election rally in Erie. Noah Riffe/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

© Noah Riffe/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Congressman Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) embrace at an election rally in Erie. Noah Riffe/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
  • A group of Pennsylvania Republicans are seeking to toss out a GOP-backed voting reform bill that passed in October 2019.
  • Their lawsuit seeks to invalidate millions of mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election.
  • The lawsuit, filed in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, alleges that Act 77, which allowed for no excuse mail-in voting, should be deemed “unconstitutional.”
  • Some 2.6 million voters in Pennsylvania cast mail-in ballots in the 2020 election.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A group of Pennsylvania Republicans, led by US Representative Mike Kelly and 2020 congressional candidate Sean Parnell, are suing Gov. Tom Wolf, the GOP-controlled General Assembly, and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, seeking to toss out a major voting reform bill that passed

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District judge orders the counting of 318 misplaced Ramsey County ballots

A judge has ordered Ramsey County election officials to open and count 318 absentee ballots that were properly cast but misplaced and went uncounted in election returns released two weeks ago.

Ramsey District Court Judge John Guthmann agreed to issue the order Thursday after Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn, DFL-Roseville, one of 131 candidates on the misplaced ballots, petitioned the court to have them counted. An attorney for Ramsey County agreed the votes should be tallied.

The county’s Canvassing Board acknowledged the “obvious error” at an emergency meeting Wednesday. County officials said they didn’t believe the additional ballots could flip any of the races, based on where the voters lived, but they county notified all candidates whose races might be affected.

Under state law, the deadline to automatically count those ballots has already passed and a court order was required to tally them.

Becker-Finn, an attorney who represents five northern Ramsey

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Judge dismisses Arizona GOP lawsuit seeking audit of county’s ballots



a person sitting at a desk: Judge dismisses Arizona GOP lawsuit seeking audit of county's ballots

© Greg Nash
Judge dismisses Arizona GOP lawsuit seeking audit of county’s ballots

A judge on Thursday rejected a Republican Party lawsuit seeking an audit of ballots in Arizona’s biggest county, which helped flip the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice and denied the Arizona GOP’s request for an audit of the county’s results, which would likely have delayed its certification of the vote tallies. An order outlining the judge’s reasoning is expected later Thursday.

The county is planning to officially certify the count on Friday, according to The Arizona Republic.

The lawsuit filed last week accuses Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and its metro area, of violating state law by doing away with its precinct voting model this election, allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling center in the

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Joe Biden won 3 of every 4 mail ballots in Pennsylvania. Trump won 2 of 3 votes cast in person. What does that mean for the future?

Pennsylvanians were deeply divided this election. And it wasn’t just whom they voted for — it was in how they cast their votes.

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Most votes for president-elect Joe Biden were cast by mail in Pennsylvania.

Most votes for President Donald Trump were cast in person on Election Day.

It’s a sharp partisan divide that first emerged in the primary and was later fueled by months of false claims and predictions of fraud from President Donald Trump. And while Trump’s tenure and the pandemic seem likely to end within months, the divide over mail ballots is likely to persist and affect campaigning for years to come.

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“Success breeds more success, so I suspect Democrats will continue to push it, and Republicans will have to figure out if they want to be a part of it,” said Mark Nevins, a Democratic political

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Sen. Lindsey Graham facing criticism for conversation about ballots with Georgia’s Secretary of State

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Sen. Lindsey Graham led a committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday amid growing criticism of a conversation he had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The Republican secretary of state said the Republican senator from South Carolina called him and asked if Raffensperger had the power to reject ballots that Raffensperger said were cast legally.

“The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee calling around to states to try and interference with the process – that was reckless and inappropriate,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Tuesday.

But Rep. Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, said he believes Graham was just trying to clarify questions about the process.

“I find it hard to believe that any senator, much less Lindsey Graham, would threaten a secretary of state,” Carter said.

The suggestion of tossing legally-cast ballots is something

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Senator Lindsey Graham pressured Georgia’s secretary of state about legally cast ballots, report says

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots, a question he interpreted as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes.

Raffensperger made the comments to The Washington Post, saying he’s faced rising pressure from fellow Republicans who want to see Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead in the state reversed. Nearly 5 million votes were cast in the presidential election in Georgia, and Biden was leading President Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes.

Raffensperger’s comments came as election officials across the state were working to complete a hand recount of votes in the presidential race.

When Georgia voters return an absentee ballot, they have to sign an oath on an outer envelope. County election office workers are required to ensure the signature matches the one on the absentee ballot application

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Graham’s pressure campaign to throw out ballots may have violated federal law, legal experts say

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Monday said Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and other GOP lawmakers had pressured him to exclude legally cast absentee ballots as the state conducts a hand recount of its presidential election.

Raffensperger over the weekend issued a surprisingly forceful rebuke of the election misinformation pushed by Trump and Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., who is leading the campaign’s recount effort in the Georgia. The secretary of state said Georgia’s recount would “affirm” the initial result, which showed President-elect Joe Biden leading by more than 10,000 votes. 

Graham, who has echoed Trump’s baseless claims sowing doubt in the results of the election, asked Raffensperger on Friday about the state’s signature-matching law, which has been the target of misinformation from the president, the secretary of state told The Washington Post.

Here’s how the outlet described Raffensperger’s account of the conversation:

Graham questioned Raffensperger

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