Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has come under harsh pressure from his fellow Republicans to do whatever it takes to deliver his state to Donald Trump—despite President-elect Joe Biden’s 14,000 vote lead. But South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham may have had the most outrageous intervention. Raffensperger told The Washington Post that Graham oh-so-delicately suggested that he throw out legally cast absentee ballots.
Graham asked Raffensperger about his power to throw out all absentee ballots cast in countries that had higher rates of nonmatching signatures between ballots and voter registration files. Georgia checks signature matches at two points—when a voter requests an absentee ballot and when the ballot is cast. But here’s Graham, wanting to just toss every absentee ballot in any county with higher rates of nonmatching signatures, as if having found some nonmatching signatures means there’s something wrong overall. Maybe those counties are already the most aggressive about signature matching, for heaven’s sake!
Graham denied having suggested throwing out legal ballots, though he acknowledged he had been asking about the general subject of signature matching. Just, you know, casually asking a neighboring state’s top election official questions about the subject of one of Trump’s big temper tantrums.
The good news is that instead of caving to pressure, Raffensperger is getting angry about it. He’s especially angry at Rep. Doug Collins, who is heading up Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s results. “I’m an engineer. We look at numbers. We look at hard data,” Raffensperger told the Post. “I can’t help it that a failed candidate like Collins is running around lying to everyone. He’s a liar.”
But Graham’s private effort to get large numbers of legal votes tossed drew widespread condemnation from Democrats:
Source: Daily Kos
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