Georgia Senators demand secretary of state to resign over election ‘failures’
The call for Brad Raffensperger to resign comes as GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are forced into runoffs in January
Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are calling for the resignation of the Georgia secretary of state after accusing him of being responsible for unspecified “failures” in the 2020 election.
Perdue and Loeffler, both Republicans who are heading into runoffs against their Democratic challengers on Jan. 5, joined a number of Republican leaders — particularly President Donald Trump — who have sowed doubt in the Georgia election.
Read More: Democrat Jon Ossoff advances to runoff election for U.S. Senate in Georgia
Without providing any evidence to their claims or what alleged failures they took issue with, the GOP Senators claimed there were election irregularities and placed the blame on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
“We believe when there are failures, they need to be called out — even when it’s in your own party,” Perdue and Loeffler said in a joint statement, the AJC reports. “The secretary of state has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections. He has failed the people of Georgia, and he should step down immediately.”
Perdue will face-off against Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff after failing to reach 50% of the vote on Election Day. Loeffler will have to defend her Senate seat against preacher Raphael Warnock, who won the most votes in their race last Tuesday with nearly 33 percent of the vote to Loeffler’s roughly 25.9 percent, according to the Associated Press.
Georgia became the state to watch in the general election after President-elect Joe Biden gained a narrow lead against Trump. The Peach State has yet to declare a winner of its 16 electoral votes. The traditional red state’s political shift has been largely credited to Stacey Abrams who led a campaign to register an estimated 800,000 new voters through her organization Fair Fight.
Read More: Stacey Abrams: Georgia Senate runoff to be ‘competitive, hard fight’
Trump, for his part, filed a lawsuit in Georgia the day after Election Day demanding absentee ballots arriving after polls closed to be set aside. A judge dismissed it the next day because the Trump campaign provided “no evidence” that the county elections board failed to comply with the law.
Secretary of State Raffensperger’s office on Monday dismissed several conspiracy theories about missing or mishandled ballots, according to the AJC. State election officials denied that military ballots went missing, ballots were thrown out or that ballots were harvested, resulting in an inaccurate ballot count.
“The facts are the facts, regardless of outcomes,” said the state’s voting system manager Gabriel Sterling during a Monday press conference. “That’s one of the things we’re focusing on here, is getting our count accurate and right.”
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