Houston Co. recount complete – no surprises

For the past two weeks, President Donald Trump has vehemently declared fraud in the voting system after initial voting resulted in President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of Presidential election. One of the battleground states in question had been Georgia, the faithful red standing state since 1992. After results concluded that Georgia’s democratic party turned the state blue, Trump demanded a “recount” audit that sent Georgia election officials back to the books. As of Thursday, November 19, the audit was completed and the Associated Press officially declared Biden the winner of Georgia, finalizing the Electoral College votes to 306-232.

Georgia counties approached the audit with intense care given the situation and the accusation of fraudulent ballots turning the tide of the election. Houston County began their long weekend to recount on Friday, November 13 at 9:00am and officially finished the audit on Sunday afternoon, November 15. Assistant Supervisor of the Houston County Board of Elections, Andy Holland, verified that on most days, eight teams of two were helping to recount the ballots, with members of the Board of Elections office there to supervise.

Holland confirmed that there were no surprises after they carefully combed through the ballots and determined the final result.

“[With] the hand audit that we did, the over all difference might have been about 13 ballots out of 75,000.” He went on to explain that the minute discrepancy, “could have come from deciphering a ballot a different way, or it could have been human error – even though each team did count every container twice.”

Holland assured that every vote counted, whether one voted early or voted on Election Day. He explained that when voting, the voter is scanning and casting the ballot his- or herself when putting it into the scanner that drops into the ballot box. He followed up by confirming that with the absentee votes, after they come back and the signatures are verified, those ballots are accepted and counted as well. Having confidence in the voting system, Holland expressed, “I think overall, the system is proven to work if you follow the procedures and make sure you don’t skip any steps and do everything right.”

With the accusations and declarations of voter fraud tearing people, communities and state legislatures apart, Holland hopes that this can help mend the thought of corruption within the voting process.

“It does give us a chance to show that the machines do work,” Holland said hopefully. “I think all of the results were 99.98% matching the machine count. I guess it does give a chance to put some more faith in the voting system, despite a lot of stuff that’s being said and a lot of stuff that’s going around.”

HHJ News