Announcer now an update on the vote count in georgia. This briefing took place earlier today in atlanta. Here. s make some room thank you. A little bit of room, sir. Sir . Sir . Can you move this way and make some room. Clear a path. A little bit more would be great. Good morning. Im dave sterling, chief operating officer. Currently, over the last year, been the statewide voting implementation manager for the state of georgia as we launch a system. Llot voting wanted to give you an update and talk about process and where we stand and get some context to the time it is taking for the results to come out here and around the rest of the country. As many of you all know, it is counties who run elections. They are 159 counties in the state. Some are more resourced than others. There cant is in this state that have a parttime employee being the director of their election and it takes time to do these things. We have counties where there are over 800,000 registered voters. Forward, a couple of things i want to put into context is people have asked why has the number not moved more quickly . As you know, the law calls for all absentee ballots to be accepted by 7 00 p. M. On election day. Obviously on election day itself, Election Officials are very busy running the election devoting. Normally,. We have to come back and then evening and enter the next day and except those ballots. They have to go through signature match and all of the other processes to confirm the validity of those. In georgia, especially when they come in right before or on election day itself, we have to get notifications out to those people that they have three days to come in and secure their ballots. That all takes time. It takes effort. Theres only so many people who are involved in these processes in the 159,000 in the state. I know there have been questions about numbers that move around. Ive heard 25,000, 50,000, 60,000. The reality is it is about 60,000 votes out right now. We are working with the counties to make sure they have properly put their stuff into their system and uploaded it. Cycle, theyelection are tired. Sometimes they are going to forget to press the upload button. We have breached with them this morning, followed phone calls through our liaisons on the Elections Office to make sure they have uploaded everything. With that, we had a new bit of votes coming from Sumter County which has lowered that the overall. I will give you what we have with every caveat we have in the world, the best numbers right now for the state. Knowing that there is going to be a handful of those ballots in small counties here and there that will be slowly aggregated into the system over time. These are the big ones that can affect the outcomes overall. Some of you may have seen some of these already. We are working to get these done today. We are working with the counties who might be having questions about how to do this properly. The main thing we want to do, fast is great. We appreciate fast. We more appreciate accuracy. Accuracy is going to be the better rock of what people believe the outcomes of these elections. Vital and it is the key to all of our processes. I want to make sure we told everybody in this room and in the state around the country, this is the first time georgia has used paper ballots in 20 years. We told people, do not expect they can expect some results on election night. In fact, we have gotten down to 250,000 yesterday. We are down to 60,000 today. Let me go through what we know we have today. I brought my computer so i would not screw it up. Brian county, 3027. Bergen county, 494. Chatham county, 17,157. Clayton county, 7408. Cobb county, 700. Floyd county, 682. Forsyth county, 4714. Fulton county, 11,200. Gwinnett county, 7300. Harris county, 3641. Lawrence county, 1697. Putnam county, 1552. Taylor county, 456. For a total right now of just over 60,000 votes. The anticipation is we will continue to go through the process today and through the evening if necessary. I know there are large counties in the state that stayed overnight. To process these. They have knocked their numbers down. We anticipate being or getting through the process today. One of the reasons our friends in Chatham County are taking longer is because they have a unique system where the Voter Registration is separate from their elections division, and they handle different sides of the absentee ballots and voting process. That is one of the things that held them up. I anticipate getting the majority of those 17,000 as well. With that, i thank you for being here. I will answer questions. We will start with justin over here. Reporter can you explain why that number seems to be such a moving target . As i said earlier, the ballots have all come in by 7 00 p. M. On election day. They had to be logged in. Now, at the same time they are making reports on the other side, they are drawing from say there are 10,000 ballots, they report 2000 ballots. That means you have 9000 ballots. That is why the number of potential votes available continue to change, they are changing. That number stops growing now, which is why we had 250,000 yesterday, about 60,000 today. Yes, maam . Reporter we have seen people online saying it is taking so long they have concerns about the validity. Can you talk about the security to make sure that they are counting everything properly . Mr. Sterling the main thing is, there are several things that work in the system, and the biggest thing of all is the Record Number of ballots. If you have any questions, you can always go back to do an audit or recount. But everything is open to the public. In fulton county, they are monitored. We had investigators go in with questions about how the ballots are being handled. It is frustrating. When everybody else is done here is that thing, florida has more to count. But margin is wider so it does not matter as much. We have a much smaller margin, we are aware of that fact, and the officials feel the pressure and they understand. They are working hard. My hats are off to them having to go through this process and be in the public scrutiny. They are all doing extremely well. And i these are 159 directors and employees that are here to protect democracy. When you talk to them, they think about that. They think about the votes of every person in this room and around the country. These are people who are not involved in voter fraud, not involved in voter suppression. I am telling you, they are doing their jobs every day. It is hard. And we are thankful to them for it. We will work with them to make sure every lawful ballot is counted. Reporter can you tell us the criteria for what you looked at and as decisions are made [indiscernible] mr. Sterling the decision has not been made it. The exact criteria has been defined in the state election board rules. It will be decided probably after we get the county certification, but not long before. The secretary gets to make that decision, so i will not speak for him. Reporter [indiscernible] mr. Sterling you can look at the rules. I cannot answer that. Reporter Chatham County with a lawsuit [indiscernible] what do you want to say about their concerns given that they have 17,000 ballots left to count . Mr. Sterling it is a lawsuit handled at the county level. I am sure that their Legal Counsel will deal with it to get through that process. Hold on one second. I cant hear anything with what they are doing up there. Reporter [inaudible] can you explain to everyone if we have any idea of how many votes might be [inaudible] mr. Sterling we are working with the counties to try to get 90 of how many will be available. Mr. Fowler has done a good job of reporting on the election. Makes a very good point that the election is not over. There are absentee ballots from military voters that if they are postmarked by tuesday, they have to be accepted by friday. Provisional ballots must be verified by friday. If you have an absentee ballot with an issue, you have until friday to cure those. Reporter did you anticipate this process would take as long as it is taking . Mr. Sterling that is why literally for the last two months, we have said it would be wednesday or thursday before we knew the answers. So, yes. Reporter [inaudible] has the secretary of States Office received reports of to support that . Mr. Sterling any report of any irregularity, we look into to ascertain the validity of the report, and if necessary, investigate. Yes, sir . Reporter voter fraud right now . Mr. Sterling i cannot say. I know we have reports of several things. Im not sure about voter fraud, because that is sort of a broad term. It is questionable, given our investigation, to give an answer to that. Reporter [inaudible] mr. Sterling i have not heard about corruption in that county. I have no information about that. Reporter the number of absentee ballots, is that the final number . Do you anticipate more being processed . Mr. Sterling there is a possibility some counties may not have uploaded them yet. They may have a random one here and there. As far as the general outline, we anticipate the absentee ballots are there, and there is security that we know the number of requests, therefore we know that that is the most outlying ability of anything to be done. Right now, as we sit here today, yes, we feel comfortable with that number. Reporter what about the possibility of a recount . Georgia law allows for that with candidates. It looks like the Trump Campaign is moving into that. Mr. Sterling georgia law calls for a fewer than. 5 of certified results, then the losing candidate, or winning candidate, could call for a recount. It would be a statewide recount. One thing we did with our new system is we provided, knowing that this states situation after 2018, we provide highcapacity standards to every single county in the state so they could conduct a recount if it became necessary. Mark . Reporter in addition to the 60,000 absentee ballots left to be counted, the overseas ones will be on top of that . Reporter if you mr. Sterling if you were not late, you wouldve heard the answer to that already. Reporter we want to know how many. Mr. Sterling we are working to get a final number. Reporter can you certify the results for the process when it is completed . Mr. Sterling no, that would not be possible. State law requires the counties to certify the results 10 days from the election, and we have time after that, but we hope to do it faster. Because what we need to be able to do, when the county is certified, we are looking at moving to the audit phase. After that closes out, then we certify the election. Yes . Reporter any Additional Information on [inaudible] said in the as i press conference on election day, we are focusing on getting the election itself done. We believe it was a dataset issue. We do not know yet. We are working on it. Right now, we are focused on the gauge or we get the answers out. Yes, maam. Reporter [inaudible] are you getting reports of ballots moving around . Mr. Sterling i cant speak to what investigations have been opened up. Talk to the to chief investigations. Reporter do you have a new approximation for the deadline in the state, end of day today . Mr. Sterling i am hoping we can get to a resolution by the end of the day, but this is going to be an extremely close margin, especially for a president ial election. We anticipate every one of those incurable ballots and provisionals may come into account. It may take a minute. Reporter the adjudication process for these ballots, made in the primaries . Mr. Sterling probably not, but i can give it a shot. Its a new system in georgia. Under the old system of scanning, we had paper ballots, something that unfortunately is open to human frailty and mistakes. We can use an Electronic System to take pictures of the ballots. The computer used to kick out if ovals marked for the single race. Under the new system, it looks at ambiguous marks, like a checkmark, it will bring up onto a screen and and Bipartisan Panel will examine the mark to discern the voter intent. It is marked in the system and can be counted properly. Reporter [inaudible] mr. Sterling you have to be more specific. We do not toss so ballots. We do not have a tracking on that right now because that is not an actual vote cast in that race. Just because there is a mistake on one part of your ballot, it does not mean the rest of the ballot will not be counted. Yes . Reporter 130,000 have been adjudicated, is that correct . Mr. Sterling ok. That kind of made my skin crawl. When we say 130,000 have been scanned and have abdicated a adjudicated the small percentage of those within the 130,000, just to give clarity. What about the military ballots and overseas ballots . What is the latest we will count those . Mr. Sterling as i said, we have to accept those ballots until friday. We cannot know what will get here until friday, until the time actually gets here for that. Dont tell me and punched you all out. With that, i just want to say one more thank you to the voters of the state of georgia, the secretary begs for your patience. This is a long process, but i think all of us would agree that an accurate count is much more vital than having a fast count. Thank you. We will follow up with questions later today. Have a great day. Announcer the Trump Campaign held a News Conference from las vegas as ballots continue to be nevada. In the Campaign Announced that they are filing a lawsuit in federal court because they want to stop the counting of what they call improper votes