Georgia's top elections official has certified election results showing Joe Biden won the presidential election after a hand tally stemming from a mandatory audit affirmed the Democrat's lead over Republican President Donald Trump.
The final results certified by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had Mr Biden with 2.47 million votes, President Donald Trump with 2.46 million and Libertarian Jo Jorgensen with 62,138. That leaves Mr Biden leading by a margin of 12,670 votes or 0.25 per cent.
"Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by the motto that numbers don't lie," Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said during a news conference at the state Capitol.
"As secretary of state, I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct. The numbers reflect the verdict of the people, not a decision by the secretary of state's office or of courts or of either campaign."
Mr Biden is the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry the state since 1992.
Now that the results are certified, Mr Trump's campaign will have two business days to request a recount since the margin is within 0.5 per cent.
That recount would be done using scanning machines that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, the secretary of state's office has said.
The hand tally stemmed from an audit required by a new state law and wasn't in response to any suspected problems with the state's results or an official recount request. The audit was meant to confirm that the voting machines correctly tabulated the votes.
The hand count produced some slight differences from the previous machine tally, but no individual county showed a variation in margin larger than 0.73 per cent, and the variation in margin in 103 of the state's 159 counties was less than 0.05 per cent, the secretary of state's office said. During the audit, several counties discovered previously uncounted ballots and were re-certifying their results.
It is the totals certified by the counties, not the results of the hand tally, that will be certified by the state.