Republicans raise issues with Georgia ‘recount’ of contested presidential election

It appears the Georgia vote recount is unlikely to significantly change results in the swing state. Local Republicans have warned that ballots aren’t actually being audited and observers aren’t getting access to the process.

Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer shared a video on Friday, showing one of the Republican observers standing behind police tape, alongside the media, unable to actually watch the recount.

Observer access was one of the five major issues Shafer and Trump campaign representative Doug Collins brought up in a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Thursday. The recount allowed only one monitor per 10 audit teams, they said, making it impossible to effectively observe the process.

The audit also “does not include a review of signatures on absentee ballot applications and ballot envelopes to confirm the validity of the statutory signature verification process by the counties,” they wrote, pointing out that some counties may not have verified the ballots at all.

Signature review is “fundamental” to the audit, and it’s impossible to certify the elections without it, Collins and Shafer wrote.

They also objected to the directive that results must be certified by Friday, lack of timely instructions to poll workers about the audit, and only a “single passing reference” in the instructions to security, transport and chain of custody involving the ballots.

Georgia was among several states where Trump was in the lead on election night, but his rival Joe Biden surged ahead due to mail-in ballots and delayed vote counts in urban Democrat strongholds. 

The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin seeking recounts and audits of the votes there. Meanwhile, the mainstream media outlets “called” the election for Biden last Saturday, and he has already begun assembling a “transition” team.

In addition to recounting the votes in the presidential election, Georgia will hold two runoff votes for the US Senate in January, as none of the candidates officially managed to get fifty percent of the vote in the first round. Incumbent Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are facing Democrat challengers Jon Osoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively. If Democrats win both seats, they will control both the House and the Senate for the next two years.

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