FRANCH Georgia vote audit affirms Biden’s victory over Trump, election officials say
A top Georgia election official said Thursday that a hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race has been completed, and that the results affirm Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead over Republican President Donald Trump.
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The hand tally of about 5 million votes stemmed from an audit required by a new state law and wasn’t in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request. The state has until Friday to certify results that have been certified and submitted by the counties.
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The counties were supposed to finish the hand count by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, said Thursday evening that the audit was complete and the results would soon be posted on the secretary of state’s website.
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Once the state certifies the election results, the losing campaign has two business days to request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%. That recount would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, Sterling said.
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It was up to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to select the race to be audited, and he said the presidential race made the most sense because of its significance and the tight margin separating the candidates. Because of that small margin, Raffensperger said a full hand recount was necessary.
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Votes that hadn’t previously been counted were found in several counties during the audit, which required recertification of the election results in those counties.
How one Atlanta suburb helped turn Georgia blue
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In Floyd County, more than 2,500 ballots were discovered during the audit that hadn’t previously been scanned, and the secretary of state’s office had called for the firing of the county’s chief elections clerk, Robert Brady. The county elections board on Thursday voted to issue a written reprimand to Brady and, because it was his second written reprimand within six months, to fire him in accordance with county policy, board member Melanie Conrad said in an email.
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Several other counties found memory cards with votes that hadn’t been uploaded and counted prior to the audit.
Going into the hand tally, Biden led Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. The previously uncounted ballots discovered during the hand count will reduce that margin to about 12,800, Sterling said.
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The Associated Press has not declared a winner in Georgia, where Biden led Trump by about 0.3 percentage points. There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. It is AP’s practice not to call a race that is — or is likely to become — subject to a recount.
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US President Donald Trump will take part Friday in an Asia-Pacific summit as he continues to reject his election loss, a day after President Xi Jinping used the forum to hail China’s growing economic clout.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathering, held online this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, brings together 21 Pacific Rim countries, accounting for about 60 percent of global GDP.
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Beijing has become the main driving force behind the trade grouping after the United States began withdrawing from multilateral bodies during Trump’s presidency.
President Xi, boosted by the signing last week of the world’s biggest trade pact, gave a keynote address to the forum Thursday, hailing China as a pivot point for global commerce and vowing to keep its “super-sized” economy open.
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Washington broke with its usual practice and did not send a representative to deliver a public speech at the two days of meetings, but a senior US official confirmed Trump would take part in the official summit on Friday evening.
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He will deliver a speech to fellow leaders but the event is mostly closed to the media, according to officials in host country Malaysia.
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It will be only the second time that Trump, who is fighting his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, has participated in APEC, the other occasion being in 2017.
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Oh Ei Sun, an analyst from the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said Trump would be aiming to “present himself as ‘presidential’ on the global stage”.
“Trump would, of course, take this opportunity to present himself as a sitting president for domestic political advantage,” he told AFP.
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The president would also “like to reiterate his administration’s hallmark emphasis on protectionism and in the process forestall China from claiming leadership in the global free trade agenda”, he added.
- Hard line on China -
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Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the voting in the November 3 election and count were fraudulent.
His campaign has launched lawsuits challenging the vote, while his allies also sought to pressure local officials to hold off on certifying vote counts.
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Trump has taken a hard line on China during his tenure, hitting the world’s number-two economy with a barrage of tariffs and tech restrictions, and a Biden administration is expected to see a more nuanced extension of Washington’s current China policy.
This year’s APEC gatherings come a week after China and 14 other Asia-Pacific countries signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s biggest free-trade pact.
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The deal, which excludes the US, is viewed as a major coup for China and further evidence that Beijing is setting the agenda for global commerce as Washington retreats.
APEC gatherings have in recent years been overshadowed by escalating trade tensions between the US and China, and leaders were unable to agree on a formal written declaration for the first at their most recent summit in 2018.
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There are hopes of greater American engagement once Biden takes office next year but observers caution his priority will be fighting the US virus outbreak, the world’s worst, and healing divisions at home.
Indications that the US is considering declaring Yemen’s Huthi rebels a “terrorist organisation” have alarmed humanitarian groups who say it could cripple aid delivery and tip the country into famine.
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The Iran-backed Huthis are at the centre of a flurry of diplomacy as the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has made isolating its arch foe Tehran a centrepiece of its regional policy, enters its final weeks.