A recount of votes in Georgia’s Fulton County paused on Sunday after a Dominion Voting Systems server crashed, according to local news reports.
Election officials outlined the problem to 11Alive, saying that a Dominion server issue temporarily delayed the recount. President Trump’s campaign requested the recount on Nov. 21 the day after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had certified Georgia’s election results following an initial recount of ballots.
“Technicians from Dominion have been dispatched to resolve the issue,” Fulton County election officials told 11Alive in a statement. “The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has also been alerted to the issue and is aware of efforts to resolve the problem.”
Officials said that they expected counting to begin again on Monday morning. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was leading Trump by about 12,000 votes in the state before the second recount began.
The Trump campaign alleged that the Georgia presidential race produced “false results” in its request for a recount. The campaign asked election officials to review signatures on mail ballot envelopes, alleging that many votes had been cast illegally.
“The Trump campaign filed a petition for recount in Georgia. We are focused on ensuring that every aspect of Georgia State Law and the U.S. Constitution are followed so that every legal vote is counted,” the Trump campaign legal team said in a statement.
“President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest recount in Georgia, which has to include signature matching and other vital safeguards. Without signature matching, this recount would be a sham and again allow for illegal votes to be counted,” the statement continued. “If there is no signature matching, this would be as phony as the initial vote count and recount. Let’s stop giving the People false results. There must be a time when we stop counting illegal ballots. Hopefully it is coming soon.”
During Georgia’s first recount, thousands of uncounted ballots turned up after election officials found memory cards in two counties that were not uploaded to the final tally. As The Daily Wire reported:
Election workers failed to upload votes stored on memory cards in Georgia’s Floyd and Fayette counties. Each card contained thousands of votes and made up some of the difference between Trump and Biden. A third incident in Walton County revealed another 284 ballots that were not included in the final tally after election workers failed to upload the votes of one of two voting machines in the town of Between.
Raffensperger said in an interview last week that he did not expect the second recount to impact the outcome of the election in Georgia.
“When we did the first audit, we found mistakes in three counties and that added over 1,000 votes for President Trump,” Raffensperger said. “That has all been accounted for, and so I think this one will be very close to what we just have now. I don’t see much difference whatsoever.”
“We told the [Trump] campaign if they find instances of voter fraud, we will check it out,” he said. “We have not seen widespread, systemic voter fraud that would overturn the results of the people.”