Georgia voter fraud probes won't change projected Biden victory, secretary of state says
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger dismissed accusations of widespread voter fraud in his state, after Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, along with the state GOP chair, criticized his handling of the election.
"At the end of the day, we don't see widespread voter fraud, but we will investigate every case we hear," Raffensperger said on "CBS This Morning" Thursday.
While he acknowledged that election officials already had "multiple investigations" ongoing, Raffensperger said they do not "rise to the level of 14,000" — the number of approximate ballots by which President Trump is trailing President-elect Biden.
Senators Loeffler and Perdue, who will face their Democratic opponents in January runoff elections, have called on Raffensperger to step down after it appeared Democrats had a chance to win the traditionally red state of Georgia.
Citing no evidence, Loeffler and Perdue accused Raffensperger of "mismanagement and lack of transparency" in the election, adding that there were "too many failures" in the process.
Raffensperger instead attributed Georgia's close race to the state's record-breaking turnout.
"We had record registrations, and people were just participating on both sides of the aisle," he said. "At the end of the day, I think you'll find that when we do the hand recount of all the votes, it will substantiate what we have gotten with electronic ballot counting."
Raffensperger called a hand recount of all ballots cast in the presidential race on Wednesday, in order to "build confidence" in Georgia's electoral system.
He pledged to "root out any illegal voting," but added it was important for all Georgians to know that "their vote matters."
"Likewise, we believe that integrity matters, and we believe that before a businessman or business people put out notices, they should be able to support that with facts," Raffensperger said.
In a press conference announcing the recount, Raffensperger said it would be "an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once."
On Thursday, he said it would be "the gold standards of audits," and promised it would be done without partisanship.
"I know it will be an open and transparent process which means we'll have people behind us, behind all the vote counters," he said. "We'll have Democratic eyes on that, Republican eyes on that, we'll have Independent eyes on that to make sure it's an accurate recount."
