In a new interview with The Washington Post, Georgia's Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, appeared to make a pretty weighty claim by saying that South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham (also a Republican) had suggested throwing out legally cast ballots as Georgia conducts a full recount for the presidential election.
Raffensperger claims that Graham brought up Georgia's signature-matching law and wondered if political bias may have led to poll workers allowing votes with non-matching signatures to be cast. Raffensperger also said that Graham went on to ask if election officials could toss mail ballots from counties with high rates of non-matching signatures. The Secretary of State says he was shocked that Graham had floated the idea of dumping those ballots.
"It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road," said Raffensperger.
For those wondering, without court intervention the state couldn't do so because Georgia elections are administered by the counties.
As for Graham's explanation, the U.S. senator put out a statement in which he called Raffensperger's assertion "ridiculous." He added "[W]hat 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.”
Graham was asked why he was even inquiring at all, being that he's a rep for South Carolina, to which he said "it affects the whole nation." He also said that he wanted a first-hand account of what was going on in the state (in contrast with reading internet reports) and said the conversation between the two wasn't threatening.
This latest development in the drama that is Raffensperger's life since the election comes after a number of other Republicans have concentrated their ire on him amidst baseless claims that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Note that Georgia was won by a narrow margin, roughly 14,000 votes as of last week, marking the first time a Democrat has won the state in a presidential election since 1992. It also remains a focus for both parties as its incumbent senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, will have runoffs with their Democratic opponents, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Both of those incumbent senators had publicly called for Raffensperger's resignation since the state was called for Biden.
In the same interview with The Post, Raffensperger rejected multiple conspiracies regarding the state's election results, including the idea that voting machines were changing votes. Raffensperger said that the state will look into fraud accusations, but that there's been no evidence of a widespread plot that ended up deciding the winner.
Speaking of Georgia, the state's recount has actually turned up 2,600 previously uncounted ballots in Floyd County, allowing Trump to make a gain of about 800, according to The Hill. Despite the discovery, Biden is still ahead of Trump in the state by over 13,000 votes. What appears to be the more likely consequence of that major screw-up will be someone losing their job:
In other news, four pro-Trump election lawsuits that were filed in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania federal courts have been dropped, CNBC reports.
