PERRY, Ga. — On Friday, every county in Georgia began a hand recount of nearly 5 million votes cast in the November 3rd general election.
The goal is to validate the results in the state's close presidential race.
Houston County poll worker John Stewart got a phone call on Thursday asking if he could come back in Friday morning to help with the hand recount.
"At 12:00 yesterday, they said they need some help, so I came," he says.
Stewart is just one of 14 poll workers who are working through 75,166 ballots before Wednesday's deadline.
"It's good. Pretty smooth. No problems so far."
Andy Holland with the Houston County Board of Elections says they got the call from the Secretary of State's Office around noon on Thursday and had to get everyone in place to start at 9:00 Friday morning.
"We came up to our big conference room here, started getting it ready, started calling poll workers. Luckily, we had quite a few that were able to show up today," says Holland.
Seven pairs of workers are counting ballots, with two Democrats and two Republicans acting as 'poll watchers' to observe the count.
They are only looking at the presidential race and organizing the ballots by candidate.
"We have 18 boxes of absentee and provisional ballots that we're gonna do first. Once we get done with those, we'll move on to in person voting both early and on election day."
Holland says the ballots submitted in person should be quicker to count because they weren't filled out by hand.
"I project that we'll be done within four to five days. We do plan on working through the weekend."
The deadline is November 18th at midnight.
Even after the hand recount, he says he doesn't expect the numbers to change.
"It should match up with what the machines totaled out. I don't think there will be much of a difference, if any."
He says they finished with all 18 of the absentee boxes before they wrapped up Friday night, which is around 23,000 ballots.
They'll be back at 9 a.m. on Saturday to continue and the count is open to the public at the Board of Elections office in Perry.
After counties finish their recounts, the Secretary of State's Office will certify statewide election results.
The state's deadline to certify is November 20th.