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Thursday, May. 27, 2021

Is Georgia the first state to decertify 2020 election results?

Dana Ford, Lead Stories
no

An article making that claim apparently assumes that a new audit will turn up evidence of fraud and, if it does, Georgia's governor will call a special legislative session to decertify the results of the 2020 election. Neither premise is proven.

Georgia has not decertified its election results—in fact, no state has.

The claim has its roots in an audit of absentee ballots in Fulton County. On May 21, 2021, a judge agreed, as part of an ongoing lawsuit, to unseal the ballots so they can be inspected and scanned. 

Georgia has already conducted several audits, including a hand recount, and all have affirmed the original outcome of the vote. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recertified the results of the presidential election on December 7, 2020. He said: "We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged."

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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