ATLANTA — The aftermath of the 2020 election was chaotic in Georgia, with the state's razor-thin margin checked and double-checked with Joe Biden and Donald Trump just 0.3% apart.
The whole process took roughly a month. By contrast, as the day-after-Election-Day dawned last Wednesday, things were basically settled.
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Why the difference?
Here's a bit of an explainer.
Why were there no recounts in Georgia for the 2024 election?
In 2020, Georgia's election was counted a second time, by hand, and then a third time, by machine (the second machine count, after the initial counting of results).
That second count -- the hand count -- actually will happen in some form or another again this year, though not necessarily for the presidential race. The hand count was technically not actually a recount -- it served as a risk-limiting audit of results, which is always required by state law after general elections and their primaries (there was one already done this year in July, for instance).
The risk-limiting audit is performed on one race as a general check against the machine-counted results before the Georgia secretary of state certifies the statewide election results. It is scheduled for Nov. 14 and 15 this year -- this Thursday and Friday. It is up to the secretary of state to choose the race -- in 2020, Sec. Raffensperger chose to audit the presidential race because of the contentious nature of that election.
But -- he doesn't have to choose the presidential race again. It remains to be seen what the 2024 risk-limiting audit is performed on.
That brings us to the third count in 2020 -- the second machine count. That was the official recount, a process whereby you simply run the ballots through the machines a second time, to see if you get the same (or close) result.
An official recount is not always available, however. A race has to be within 0.5% in Georgia, and then a candidate or their campaign is entitled to request it by law. That's what Trump's campaign did in 2020.
The difference in 2024? The race was about a 2% difference in Trump's favor. So no machine recount will be conducted.