5:11 p.m. ET, November 23, 2020
Georgia recount will begin Tuesday morning
From CNN’s Jason Morris, Amara Walker, and Tori Apodaca
Poll watchers monitor people hand counting 2020 presidential election ballots during an audit at the Gwinnett County Voter Registration Office in Lawrenceville, Georgia, on Friday, November 13.
Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg/Getty Images
All of Georgia's 159 counties must begin their recount efforts at 9 a.m. Tuesday, said Gabriel Sterling, voter implementation manager with the Secretary of State’s office.
Counties must wrap up their recount by midnight on Wednesday, Dec. 2.
“They have to begin tomorrow morning by 9 a.m.,” Sterling said during a new conference. “But beginning could also be if they are organizing and getting the people lined up because we want to make sure we have a lot of notice go out so we can have the monitors be there and adjudication teams, especially for the absentee votes first because those are the ones that are most likely to be needing adjudication."
Ballots cannot be contested by party monitors on site during this process. There will be a minimum of two monitors per party at each location where the recount is occurring, according to Sterling. Larger counties that have more than two scanners will have an additional monitor for each party per each additional scanner.
Sterling said that this count, under the code of Georgia, will be the final certified version of the election results.
The Trump campaign requested the recount on Saturday, which is their right by Georgia law because the margin of Joe Biden’s victory is less than 0.5%. The recount will be taxpayer-funded, and will be conducted in each county statewide using high speed ballot scanners.
President-elect Biden, who was declared the winner last Friday when the state certified the results, has a 12,670 vote or .2% lead over President Trump in Georgia.