FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — This is a blog archive for election updates on Nov. 16. For the latest blog click here.
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A historic audit of Georgia’s election began on Friday. It’s a hand retally of the state’s nearly 5 million ballots cast in the general election on Nov. 3. It’s the largest audit in the country’s history to be conducted by hand.
This is all in an effort to validate the close results in the presidential race. In Georgia, President-elect Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by less than 0.5%.
NBC projected Friday that Biden is the apparent winner in Georgia. The Associated Press has not called the race yet.
Some counties are providing live video streams of their retally process.
The audit is not a recount. A recount can happen after the state certifies their election results and must be requested by the candidate. That’s why it’s being called a retally or hand count.
Throughout the day, we’ll update this blog with new information from the counties as they continue the tally along with other election updates.
10:10 p.m. | DeKalb County has finished its hand retally of the votes, Erik Burton confirmed to 11Alive. The final data transmission to the Secretary of State's Office will be completed on Monday morning, the county said.
9:30 p.m. | The Republican National Convention is making big promises to send resources to Georgia for the Senate race.
Republicans need to win at least one seat in order to keep the majority in the United States Senate. With that fight in mind, the RNC is pulling out all the stops and committing at least $20 million and more than 600 staffers to Georgia.
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel added: “We need Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the Senate, and the RNC is mobilizing our grassroots army to help keep them there.”
7:30 p.m. | More details from Fulton on the retally efforts: The county said it completed the hand count of the 528,000 ballots cast during the Nov. 3 General Election, representing the vast majority of the Risk Limiting Audit process.
The county said the audit involved the participation of hundreds of workers, monitors, and observers. At peak times, Fulton County said it had more than 170 teams working to complete the audit. Fulton County employees and poll workers conducted the audit work, with active participation from political party monitors, and members of the press and the general public observing the process.
The county said on Monday, the Department of Registration & Elections will finalize data entry, following the process provided by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
The audit is still ongoing in DeKalb County, where workers there are tasked with counting more than 370,000 ballots.
6 p.m. | As counties across the state work to meet the Wednesday deadline to complete an audit of the presidential election, Democratic candidates for the Senate continued to campaign ahead of their Jan. 5 runoff election.
On Sunday, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock hosted a joint meet-and-greet in Marietta in Cobb County, a community in which Democrats made significant progress in chipping away Republican support during the election.
The candidates took two very different approaches in their speeches today, with Ossoff going after his opponent, Sen. David Perdue, while Warnock barely acknowledged Senator Kelly Loeffler.
4:15 p.m. | In an update, Fulton County election officials say the last team counting ballots in the election retally finished just after 4 p.m., completing the county's audit.
2:30 p.m. | Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue gave his first interview post-election day on Fox News in which he spoke about the role of the upcoming Senate runoff race in the balance of power in the chamber. Perdue is headed for a runoff with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff on Jan. 5 after the Republican incumbent failed to win 50% plus one of the vote.
1:30 p.m. | Fulton County has a small team still working to complete the audit. 11Alive has reached out to other metro counties to see where they stand. Fulton is the largest in the state with around 528,000 ballots that needed to be re-tallied.
11 a.m. | Watch a replay of the 11Alive special "Decision Georgia."
10:15 a.m. | Fulton County officials say they are nearly done with their retally and have already begun uploading results back to the state. They said their was a bit of a backlog on the upload due to counties only getting one software login, however, that has been resolved and the process for that is speeding up.
Watch a replay of the 10 a.m. news conference here:
8:15 a.m. | Fulton County has begun the process of retallying ballots on Sunday morning. They said on Saturday, workers completed half of the work needed to be done for the audit. They will hold a press briefing at 10 a.m.