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AUGUSTA, Ga. —  Georgia is certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the state’s 16 electoral votes.

President Trump has two business days to request a machine recount since the margin was less than a half percent.

Biden won by more than 12,o00 votes and recounts usually only change the totals by a couple hundred.

The state just completed a hand audit of the more than five million ballots cast in the presidential election.


ATLANTA — Georgia elections officials say a hand recount of ballots didn’t do much to change the election outcome.

The recount upholds the original outcome with Joe Biden beating President Trump by over 12,000 votes.  The hand recount showed very little difference from the initial machine count, with Trump gaining about 1,700 votes.

“Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said in a statement.

“This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time.”

Georgia had to do a hand recount because the margin of victory was so close.  On Friday, the election results are expected to be certified by Raffensperger.

The Biden campaign’s communications director for Georgia, Jaclyn Rothenberg, said in a statement Thursday evening that the recount outcome, “simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected Joe Biden to be their next president.”

CNN contributed to this article