Ballot counting in Arizona will extend to weekend with 250,000 ballots left to count

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that the presidential race in the state “remains too close to call” during a news conference Friday.

“The focus for our office and for the county elections officials, for now, remains on making sure that every legal vote is counted and recorded accurately,” he said.

Raffensperger added that out of about the 5 million votes cast, the margin will be within a “few thousand.”

“With a margin that small, there will be likely a recount in Georgia,” he said.

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said the number of outstanding votes remains “about the same as they were this morning. Not too much change.”

Sterling said that there were about 4,000 outstanding ballots to be counted across a handful of counties earlier in the day.

Sterling noted that 18,008 ballots from military and other citizens from Georgia who are overseas have been accepted by the state. Approximately 8,410 are “still available to be received” he said, if those ballots were postmarked by Election Day and received by end of business Friday.

“That does not mean that there’s a bucket of 8,410 votes to be counted. That means there are 8,410 votes that could have been postmarked Tuesday and could be received by the elections officials today, so as I said earlier, it’s going to be more than 0 and less than 8,410,” Sterling explained.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden currently leads President Trump in total votes counted to date across Georgia by 1,585 votes, Sterling said.

Remember: CNN is yet to project a winner in Georgia. There are 16 electoral votes at stake in the state. Neither Biden nor Trump have received the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. According to CNN’s latest projections, Biden has 253 electoral votes to Trump’s 213.

Hear the announcement: