On Tuesday morning, a federal judge ruled that the Georgia secretary of state’s office could not certify the results of Georgia’s too-close-to-call governor’s race before Friday, giving counties additional days to count every ballot as the gap to trigger a run-off election continued to close. Thanks to successful legal actions taken by the Abrams for Governor campaign and other groups, thousands of yet-to-be-counted provisional, absentee, and other ballots will be tallied in the coming days. And even in counties where the secretary of state’s office claims that “100 percent of the vote has been reported,” thousands of additional votes — the majority of them for Stacey Abrams — continue to be added to the total. Counties now have at least until the Friday deadline to ensure that all votes are counted; as of Tuesday evening, the Abrams campaign needed just 18,617 votes to trigger a run-off, and just 16,296 votes to trigger a recount.
Washington Post: Federal judge delays certification of Georgia election results, citing concerns over provisional ballots
A federal judge has barred the Georgia secretary of state’s office from immediately certifying election results in the state to allow more time to address questions about thousands of provisional ballots that voters were forced to cast last week.
The ruling in the suit brought by Common Cause injected more days of uncertainty into the hard-fought Georgia governor’s race, in which Democrat Stacey Abrams is hoping to force a runoff with Republican Brian Kemp, who is leading by about 59,000 votes.
Tuesday was the deadline for Georgia’s 159 counties to finalize their elections results, and the secretary of state had planned to certify those results Wednesday. But U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said late Monday that the secretary of state’s office could not certify results before Friday and that it had to “immediately establish and publicize on its website a secure and free-access hotline or website for provisional ballot voters to access to determine whether their provisional ballots were counted and, if not, the reason why.”
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