Audit Of Oconee Election Results Begins On Friday Morning

Oconee County Elections officials will begin at 9 a.m. on Friday at the Board of Elections and Registration Office at 10 Court Street in Watksinville what is being called a Risk Limiting Audit of the 25,399 votes cast in the county in the Nov. 3 election.

Cameras will record the work of the elections teams in the room where the audit is being conducted, according to Jennifer Stone, assistant director of Elections and Registration for the county.

Citizens can sit in the lobby of the Elections and Registration Office and watch the work of the auditors as it progresses.

A designated monitor sent by the state Executive Committees of each political party can be present, Stone said.

The count is completely manual, without use of scanning equipment, and is to be completed no later than midnight of Wednesday, Nov. 18, according to materials provided to the local office on Thursday from the Secretary of State Office.

The Audit was ordered by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday, after pressure from President Donald Trump and other Republicans, and will focus exclusively on votes for president.

The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration on Tuesday–before the announcement of the audit--had voted to certify the county’s results, which recorded 16,595 votes for Trump (65.9 percent) , 8,162 votes for Joseph Biden (32.4 percent), and 411 votes for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen (1.6 percent).

Across the state, Biden leads Trump by 14,072 votes, according to data on the web site of the Secretary of State on Thursday afternoon.

For more on this story, with a video of the Board of Elections and Registration meeting on Tuesday, please go to Oconee County Observations.