2:42
And during his call with Raffensperger Saturday, Trump himself acknowledged that supporters may be sitting out the election, though he asserted Raffensperger was to blame.
\"You have a big election coming up ... and because of what you've done to the president, a lot of people aren't going out to vote. And a lot of Republicans are gonna vote negative because they hate what you did to the president,\" Trump said.
In the two months since the general election, Raffensperger's office has overseen two complete recounts of the votes in the presidential election, including an unprecedented hand count audit of the nearly 5 million votes cast in the race. He's repeatedly reaffirmed that Biden was the legitimate winner of the election and has earned Trump's ire because of it.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/brad-raffensperger-file-ap-jef-210103_1609699803874_hpEmbed_3x2_384.jpg\")
Even while conceding that illegal votes were likely cast and counted -- as they are in every election -- Raffensperger and other officials in his office have maintained that they have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of an election Trump lost by about 12,000 votes. Citing that a specific allegation was raised that Cobb County did not do signature matching for absentee ballots properly in the June primary, Raffensperger's office launched a signature match audit in the county. Done in coordination with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the audit examined the signatures on around 15,000 absentee ballot oath envelopes, and upon completion, the GBI said investigators found only two instances where ballots should have gone through the \"cure\" process, but determined that even those ballots were not fraudulently cast.
But the public pleas from the Republicans overseeing the election, and other former elected officials -- including former Sens. Saxby Chambliss, whom Perdue succeeded, and Johnny Isakson, whom Loeffler was appointed to replace -- for the party to focus its energy on winning the runoff elections, Trump has stood by his fictional narrative of election fraud, and Loeffler and Perdue have stood staunchly behind him as he has, including calling for Raffensperger's resignation not even a week after the general election.
Charles Bullock, a professor at the University of Georgia and an expert in Southern politics, told ABC News the senators basically have no choice but to stand by Trump, saying the president's \"antenna for identifying betrayers is particularly active right now.\"
While all votes must be cast by 7 p.m. Tuesday, it's likely to be days before Georgians -- and the rest of the country -- know who's won the runoffs. It all depends on how tight the races are, and according to FiveThirtyEight's polling averages, the races are essentially deadlocked: Ossoff's leading by about one percentage point and Warnock is leading by about two.
Asked when to anticipate significant results, Georgia's Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs told ABC News, \"Hopefully, we will have results two days after the election. It's 100% dependent on counties, who run elections, so while we might do all the public relations in the world to get the counties to count faster, you know, counties determine how quickly they're going to work.\"
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/georgia-voters-file-rt-jef-210103_1609699803871_hpEmbed_3x2_384.jpg\")
ABC News reached out to the state's six largest counties, which all lean Democratic and will be critical to Ossoff or Warnock securing a victory in Georgia, to ask about their vote-counting plan and expectations. Contacted by ABC News multiple times over several days, a spokesperson for Fulton County, the largest in the state and home to most of Atlanta, said she would follow up with the elections staff but ultimately did not send details before this story was published. Similarly, a spokesperson for Gwinnett County, the second largest in the state, responded to ABC News' inquiry and said he would follow up, but then did not send vote-counting details ahead of publishing. The elections department for Clayton County, the most Democratic county in the state that was responsible for the vote drop that put Biden ahead of Trump after the general, did not respond to emailed requests for details.
Counties were able to start processing returned absentee ballots up to the point of tabulation, which cannot happen until polls close, beginning 15 days before the election. The State Election Board, which passed this emergency rule ahead of the general election in an effort to speed up the vote counting, amended the rule for the runoff to require counties to begin doing this eight days before the election.
Ross Cavitt, a spokesperson for Cobb County, which is the third-largest in the state, said the county started processing absentee ballots the first day they legally could. On election night, he said the elections division plans to upload all votes cast during the early voting period and in-person on election day, as well as all absentee ballots returned before Tuesday. A spokesperson for DeKalb County, the fourth largest in the state, told ABC News the county also expects to upload results from advance voting, election day and \"a large majority of absentee ballots.\" Russell Bridges, the elections supervisor in Chatham County, where Savannah is located, told ABC News that if the runoff goes similarly to the November election, the advancing voting ballots will be uploaded early on election night, followed by absentee ballots scanned ahead of election day and then votes cast at polling places on election day. This all happened by around 11 p.m. on Nov. 3.
Despite backing the president's false election claims and GOP-led legal challenges seeking changes to the absentee ballot process ahead of the runoff failing in court, Perdue has said he thinks the runoff election will be fair.
\"Well, certainly it's going to be a tight election. ... If we get our vote out on Monday, I'm convinced now with 8,000 poll watchers and we've got cameras on all the drop boxes, we're going to have as fair of an election as we can,\" Perdue said on Fox News Friday. \"In terms of January, I'm convinced that we have plugged a lot of the holes that might have been there in November.\"
Raffensperger said that his office is prepared to oversee another recount if necessary. If the margin between the winning and losing candidate in either race is less than 0.5%, the losing candidate can request a machine recount, as the Trump campaign did after the general election was first certified on Nov. 20.
\"We know we can do a recount if we have to. We can do another hand recount or we can do that also with the machine if the race gets that close,\" Raffensperger told ABC's \"Good Morning America\" Sunday.
This report was featured in the Monday, Jan 4, 2020, episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ daily news podcast.
\"Start Here\" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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