The Latest: Georgia counties making progress in ballot recount, officials say

ATLANTA — The hand recount of nearly 5 million ballots continued in Georgia Saturday as President Donald Trump took to Twitter to make unfounded claims that Georgia officials cheated during the election.

Trump appeared to accuse Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of colluding with Democrat Stacey Abrams to make it difficult to match signatures with ballots. There is no evidence to support this claim, and Twitter labeled the tweet “misleading.”

Kemp has been a vocal supporter of the president.

Later Saturday, Trump demanded on Twitter that election officials stop the recount claiming it is a waste of time.

“They are not showing the matching signatures,” Trump wrote. “Call off the recount until they allow the MATCH. Don’t let the Radical Left Dems Steal THIS ELECTION!”

On Friday, Trump lashed out at Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Raffensperger pushed back Saturday in a string of tweets that included election FAQs and how the voting process works in Georgia.

Raffensperger ordered the recount after President-elect Joe Biden’s narrow victory over President Donald Trump in Georgia.

One county in Georgia has already completed their recount and released the results. Bacon County in southeast Georgia said that the results of their recount matched the initial vote tally. The county is heavily Republican and went 86% to 14% for President Donald Trump. Trump got 4,018 votes and Biden got 625.

Channel 2′s Audrey Washington was in Fulton County, where election workers started to count Saturday morning at the Georgia World Congress Center and finished up around 5 p.m. Election officials told Washington they got through just about half the ballots. Counting resumes Sunday morning at 9 a.m.

Election Director Richard Barron said the largest recount he’s ever been a part of involved just a hundred or so votes.

Fulton County election workers will have to count more than 500,000 ballots. Barron said they hope to be done by Monday.

“We’re putting together 125 audit teams, and so, theoretically, it should take two todays,” Barron said. “Although I think that morning will probably get started a little slowly, then once people get used to the process, it will ramp up and get going.”

Fulton County election officials certified the election Friday during a virtual meeting. Election board members vowed that the recount would be fair and accurate.

In DeKalb County, Voter Registration and Elections Director Erica Hamilton said the recount was going smoothly.

“We’ve finished our absentee-by-mail and election day (counts) and now we’re working on our in-person absentee votes,” Hamilton said.

[SPECIAL SECTION: Election 2020]

The deadline for all 159 counties to get their recounts to the secretary’s office is next Wednesday.

[Here’s how some metro Atlanta counties are planning to recount ballots by hand]

“This is very important to understand because right now there’s a swath of voters in this state and around the country that will say ‘those machines cheat,’ those machines ‘miscounted,’ ‘that guy lost,’” said Georgia Voter System Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling.

The Secretary of State’s office chose the presidential race to audit because its close, not because of pressure from the Trump campaign.

“The press has mischaracterized this at many ways as caving to the Trump campaign. There’s nothing that could be further from the truth,” Sterling said.

Election workers trained Thursday on how to tally the votes.

GEORGIA VOTER GUIDE:

• Key Dates for 2020 Runoff Elections in Georgia
• These are the 7 races that are in a runoff in Georgia
• Did you know? You can still register to vote in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs
• How to vote by absentee ballot for Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff elections

Georgia counties starting recount of 2020 election by hand