The Georgia Secretary of State's office pushed back against conspiracy theories and accusations of problems with the election while also revealing more than 7,000 provisional ballots from military members did not make it to their county by the legally mandated cutoff date. Plus, there still isn't a final number on the vote count in Georgia.
In a wide ranging update, Gabriel Sterling of the Secretary of State's office said a total of 7,786 provisional ballots from military members did not make it back in time. He continued saying the state had no issues with Dominion Software during the election in the state. Sterling said facts are facts, regardless of the outcomes and everyone in Georgia should know the state had a factual outcome.
He then took time during his update to explain and debunk rumors of perceived problems in the state of Georgia.
- There were no ballots in a dumpster in Spalding County. Some envelopes were found in the dumpster, but nothing happened in that county that impacted the election. Sterling also said according to the log files, no one touched a system in question in Spalding County after October 31.
- Sterling said there was no double count in Gwinnett County. Gwinnett ballots appeared to be double-counted because the reporting system counted pages instead of ballots and that made it appear there were twice as many ballots.
- In Fulton County, Sterling said the county uploaded results first and then did reconciliation afterwards and figured out hours later everything didn't match. They found a box of damaged ballots still to be counted and noted more than 100 ballots scanned incorrectly into the system under absentee ballots. The Secretary of State's office said the county has given a full accounting of ballots and observers from both parties and the state oversaw the issue.
- Finally, Sterling said Georgia flipping support to President-elect Joe Biden wasn't a surprise to anyone who has followed the recent elections in the state citing close elections in 2016 and 2018 as examples.
The Secretary of State's office said the voters in Georgia did a good job of adopting their behaviors this cycle, including early voting. All of the early voting and other changes led to an average wait time of two minutes on Election Day, Sterling said.
A total of 47 counties have certified their election results leaving 112 counties to go in the state. All county results must be certified by Friday, November 13. After that, the state will certify its results by Friday, November 20, as outlined in state law.