Many of the national networks are now poised to call Georgia for Joe Biden based on his wafer-thin lead — roughly 10,353 votes out of 5 million cast.
But in so doing, they are overlooking the ominous and possibly game-changing fact that at least 80,000 votes cast in populous Gwinnett County (suburban Atlanta) need to be rerun, recounted, and possibly readjudicated.
Put another way, the rerunning of the Gwinnett ballots could easily determine who won the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes.
According to a spokesman for Gwinnett County, when officials began to push through the scanner a round of batches of votes — nearly 3,200 batches with each containing up to 25 ballots — they would not push through because the software showed the process of adjudication was needed.
Adjudication is the process of resolving ballots whose markings are in question.
"Absentee ballots are filled out by hand, and if a ballot is marked clearly, it will run through the scanner without a problem," County Communications Director Joe Sorenson explained to WXIA-TV in Atlanta. "If there's a problem with how the ballot was filled out — for example, a voter placed a check mark instead of filling in the circle, didn’t completely fill in the circle, or voted for more candidates than allowed in a race — the scanning software will send the ballot to the adjudication module."
Sorenson warned that as a result, as many as 80,000 of these votes need to be rerun and readjudicated, the vote counts reported on TV networks could fluctuate and be incomplete.
"This is why the results on election night are always labeled unofficial and incomplete," he said.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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