Georgia secretary of state: Lying to voters about fraud is ’emotional abuse’
Brad Raffensperger claimed Sen. Lindsey Graham reached out and suggested he toss absentee votes cast from Democrats.
In the Nov. 3 election, Donald Trump, America’s incumbent president, lost the popular vote by nearly six million votes.
Despite last-minute court filings and statements from current White House staff, Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly said there has been no evidence of systemic election fraud in The Peach State. And yet, he has had to “unload” on his fellow Republicans.
“There are just people who are really angry and they’re being spun up,” Raffensperger, a lifelong Republican, exclusively told The Hill. “It’s really the spinners that should be ashamed for playing with people’s emotions. Politicians of both sides should never play with people’s emotions. It’s one thing to motivate people, I get that. But to spin people up and play with their emotions, it’s emotional abuse, and they ought to grow up and start acting with integrity.”
The trained engineer upset his party fellows with his assertions that recently re-elected South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham had reached out to him and suggested Raffensperger toss absentee votes cast from districts mostly populated by Democrats.
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Raffensperger has been called out on President Donald Trump’s Twitter as a RINO, short for “Republican in name only,” and he’s dismissed criticism from GOP legislators, particularly, Republican Georgia senators David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler, who both face high-profile runoff races in their state on Jan. 5.
Perdue and Loeffler face an uphill battles against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock respectively, races that could decide which party holds Senate majority.
Read More: Trump targets vote certification in late bid to block Biden
Georgia is amid a hand recount of over five million ballots cast on Nov. 3. Biden leads there by fewer than 14,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential nominee in nearly 30 years to win the formerly solidly-red state.
Support from local officials, especially former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, helped flip the state, with her Fair Fight Campaign, which continues to be crucial in registering voters and getting them to the polls.
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