Results from Georgia's Full Hand Recount Are in - Here's What They Showed

The results have been released in Georgia's recount in the presidential election, and the Georgia secretary of state says Joe Biden is still in the lead after the full hand recount of every ballot.

The tally shows President Trump with 2,462,857 votes and Joe Biden with 2,475,141 votes.

Trump Campaign Senior Legal Advisor Jenna Ellis says the recount wasn't conducted in a manner that could expose illegal ballots.  

"Headlines are already falsely reporting that Joe Biden is declared the winner in Georgia. Sorry, media, that's not how it works. The State of Georgia has not certified its results, and it should not. This so-called hand recount went exactly as we expected because Georgia simply recounted all of the illegal ballots that had been included in the total. We continue to demand that Georgia conduct an honest recount, which includes signature matching. We intend to pursue all legal options to ensure that only legal ballots are counted," Ellis said. 

Biden's lead did shrink a bit after nearly 6,000 additional votes were discovered in four different counties. Trump gained nearly 1,400 more votes than Biden from those batches of ballots, but that wasn't enough to flip the end result. 

There was also a serious error that occurred during the hand recount in Georgia's DeKalb County that would have given Biden 9,000 extra votes, but it was caught at the last minute by an election monitor and corrected. The mistake was never applied to the final tally, but GOP recount monitors argue they weren't allowed to have enough watchers to prevent other potential problems like that one. 

The margin of victory is still less than 0.5%, so the President can request a recount after certification of the results. That recount would be conducted by machine and would involve rescanning all paper ballots.

"Georgia's historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state's new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results," said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time."