(The Center Square) – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger officially certified the 2024 presidential election results on Friday morning.
This year’s election was a notable shift from 2020, when the race wasn’t even called for President Joe Biden until 16 days after Election Day.
“The votes were counted accurately, securely, and quickly,” said Raffensperger. “I’m proud to certify these results and we congratulate President-elect Donald J. Trump on his victory.”
Trump swept the seven consensus battleground states against Democrat Kamala Harris, with Georgia accounting for 16 in that 93-0 whitewash.
Raffensperger has made it his mission since first being elected in 2018 to make elections in Georgia the “most secure” in the nation.
The Republican has faced backlash from both sides of the aisle, but has continued with his initiatives.
One of those initiatives for this election was a statewide “risk limiting audit” to confirm the accuracy of the voting measures used to count ballots.
“The audits showed consistency with the machine tally, confirming that the results were reported accurately and reflecting the outcome of the presidential race in Georgia,” said a release from the secretary of state’s office.
As a part of the audit, election officials in all of Georgia’s 159 counties hand counted randomly selected ballots. There were very slight differences between the electronic and hand-counted ballots, which were “well within the expected margin of error for an audit of this size, and largely caused by human error during the hand counting process.”
The state’s certification of the presidential election results follows the county’s certifications on Nov. 12.
Georgia had record voter turnout, both in early voting and on Election Day. Of the state’s nearly 7.3 million voters, 5.3 million voted (72.7% turnout) in the general election.
With all precincts reporting in the Peach State, Trump received 50.73% of the vote to Harris’ 48.53%. Two third-party candidates garnered just 0.74%.
“This was the most secure election in Georgia’s history,” Raffensperger said.
Now, with the election results certified, Rep. Governor Brian Kemp will begin to certify Georgia’s slate of electors for the state’s electoral college votes.
