Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Claims Lindsey Graham Proposed He Exclude Legal Ballots

Josh FeldmanNov 16th, 2020, 5:59 pm
 

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, has been attacked in the past week by a number of other Republicans, and he unloaded in a new interview about what he’s been hearing privately and publicly.

Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — both headed to runoffs against their Democratic opponents Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — publicly called on Raffensperger to resign as the state counted votes in the presidential election, amid scrutiny from Republicans given how close the race was. The state was called for Joe Biden, and a hand recount is currently underway.

President Donald Trump attacked Raffensperger amid his baseless claims about the election being stolen from him, and more Republicans are turning their ire on both Raffensperger and Republican Governor Brian Kemp.

In a new interview with the Washington Post, Raffensperger made a pretty serious claim about a conversation he had with Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In their conversation, Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state’s signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said.

Raffspenger said he was stunned that Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Absent court intervention, Raffensperger doesn’t have the power to do what Graham suggested, as counties administer elections in Georgia.

“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said.

Graham’s office responded to the Post with links to a letter from Georgia Republicans raising their concerns, as well as Doug Collins’ tweet going after Raffensperger.

Collins, incidentally, has frustrated Raffensperger with his attacks. The Secretary of State apparently called his fellow Georgia Republican a “liar” and said, “I can’t help it that a failed candidate like Doug Collins is running around lying to everyone. He’s a liar.”

In the interview, Raffensperger pushed back against a number of conspiracies about the election results, including one particular conspiracy theory about voting machines changing votes. He said that they’re going to investigate accusations of fraud, but hasn’t seen evidence of fraud so widespread it could change the results.

After the article and the accusation against Graham spread around Twitter, Graham responded in a statement saying, “That’s ridiculous … what I’m trying to find out was how do you verify signatures for mail in ballots in these states … I thought it was a good conversation, I’m surprised to hear him characterize it that way.”

Last week the Trump campaign put out names of four dead people who supposedly voted in the election. Two of those claims have already been roundly debunked.

Raffensperger also spoke Monday with Erick Erickson, who posted a thread of Raffensperger’s responses to some of claims being thrown out about the vote:

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Josh Feldman - Senior Editor

Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac