Witness corroborates statement that Sen. Lindsey Graham asked for ballots to be thrown out

Graham calls the allegations “ridiculous.”

Nov 17, 2020

Sen. Lindsey Graham is being accused of asking if ballots can be thrown out from the 2020 election.

On Tuesday, Gabriel Sterling, an election implementation manager working with Brad Raffensberger, Georgia’s Secretary of State claims they were on a phone call and heard Graham asking if ballots can be thrown out by state officials, per CNN.

Sterling told CNN on Tuesday, “What I heard was basically discussions about absentee ballots and if a potentially … if there was a percentage of signatures that weren’t really, truly matching, is there some point we could get to, we could say somebody went to a courtroom could say well, let’s throw (out) all these ballots because we have no way of knowing because the ballots are separated.”

He goes on to add, “There is no physical ability for this office to do anything along those lines,” in reference to tossing ballots. “If somebody wanted to go that route, they could go the court route.”

Georgia Secretary Of State Brad Raffensperger Briefs Media On Continuing Vote Count — Brad Raffensberger (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

Raffensberger recently alleged that Graham, a Trump advocate, asked if he could “look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out,” in reference to votes in favor of President-elect Joe Biden.

But Graham calls the allegations “ridiculous.”

Sterling said Graham’s request “might have gone a little to the edge of” what is acceptable.

But Sterling says the current president will continue to move forward in evaluating the votes.

“The president is going to continue to fight, his supporters continue to fight. Our job is to continue to follow the law, and we were answering process questions… that’s what we were doing on the call,” he told CNN.

It has been weeks since the presidential election and Trump has yet to concede to Biden. Biden and his team are moving forward with the transition despite the lack of cooperation from the White House, while Trump continues to tweet unfounded claims of voter fraud.

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