Can ya throw them out?
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), to question the validity of legally cast absentee ballots in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state.
SENATOR Lindsey Graham has been pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to get rid of legal ballots.
That’s…a crime, isn’t it? Isn’t there a federal law against trying to mess with votes and/or intimidate voters? Isn’t that just a straight-up you can be prosecuted crime?
(looks it up)
Yes, it is. There are state laws and federal laws against doing this shit.
Raffensperger and his wife have been getting threats, including death threats.
“Other than getting you angry, it’s also very disillusioning,” Raffensperger said of the threats, “particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle. Everyone that is working on this needs to elevate their speech. We need to be thoughtful and careful about what we say.” He said he reported the threats to state authorities.
The pressure on Raffensperger, who has bucked his party in defending the state’s voting process, comes as Georgia is in the midst of a laborious hand recount of about 5 million ballots. President-elect Joe Biden has a 14,000-vote lead in the initial count.
Trump won Michigan by 10 thousand votes in 2016. I just looked it up.
In the interview, Raffensperger also said he spoke on Friday to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims about voting irregularities.
In their conversation, Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state’s signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger said he was stunned that Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Absent court intervention, Raffensperger doesn’t have the power to do what Graham suggested, as counties administer elections in Georgia.
Chair of the Judiciary Committee, folks.
That’s the real and dangerous problem. If Graham is interfering or making an effort to interfere with the voting or vote count and it is illegal to do that and he is not held to whatever account, even if that means arrest, then we don’t have a functioning law enforcement. That’s what scares me. Criminals will be criminals. When the justice system does nothing to them to protect the public, that is domestic terror.