Georgia official accuses Trump of undermining faith in elections
Washington DC, Jan 5 (efe-epa).- Poll authorities in Georgia have accused outgoing President Donald Trump of “undermining” the faith of voters in the electoral system ahead of a key election in the state.
One of the top election officials directed harsh criticism at the president on Monday, two days after Trump asked Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes in his favor in the state and undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the Nov.3 presidential polls.
Trump made the threat during an extraordinary telephonic conversation with Raffensperger whose contents were leaked to the media.
“It’s not normal, out of place. Nobody I know who is president would do something like that to a secretary of state,” said Gabriel Sterling, voting system implementation manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
Sterling one-by-one debunked all of Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud in Georgia, a swing state that the president lost by 11,779 votes.
There have already been three vote counts in the state to corroborate the election’s result.
“This is all easily, provably false, yet the president persists, and by doing so undermines Georgians’ faith in the election system, especially Republican Georgians in this case,” Sterling added.
Senate runoff elections are scheduled to be held in Georgia on Tuesday.
They will determine which party controls the Senate during the first two years of Biden’s presidency.
The Republicans only need to win one of the seats at stake in Georgia to retain control of the Senate while Democrats could wrest control of the chamber from them if they manage to win the two seats up for the contest.
“Everybody who cares about the future of this nation should turn out and vote, in the Georgia elections on Tuesday,” Sterling said.
“Everybody’s vote is going to count. Everybody’s vote did count [in November],” he added.
Sterling, who is Republican, described his press conference as “Groundhog Day” for all the times he has had to debunk conspiracy theories about alleged fraud in Georgia.
“I’m not acknowledging that there was massive voter fraud, because there wasn’t. But if you believe in your heart of hearts that there was, the best thing for you to do is to turn out and vote and make it harder for them to steal,” he urged.
Both Biden and Trump are campaigning for their respective party’s Senate candidates in Georgia on Monday, a sign of how close and decisive the race is. EFE-EPA
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