Stacey Abrams (at podium) presides over Georgia’s Democratic slate of electors as they cast votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Dec. 14, 2020. (Democratic Party of Georgia photo)
Georgia’s members to the Electoral College have cast their 16 votes for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in nearly 30 years.
President-elect Joe Biden was formally declared winner of Georgia’s general election during a ceremony Tuesday at the state Capitol attended by many of the state’s most prominent Democratic leaders.
The electors, who were twice certified by Gov. Brian Kemp following two recounts, also handed their 16 votes to Biden’s running mate, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Biden defeated President Donald Trump last month in Georgia by 12,779 votes, marking the first Democratic presidential victor in the state since former President Bill Clinton won in 1992.
Biden’s win in Georgia came after gains for Democrats in the state’s suburban areas in recent elections, particularly in longstanding Republican strongholds like Cobb and Gwinnett counties.
Democratic voters also took advantage of record-breaking mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 1.3 million Georgians casting absentee ballots in the Nov. 3 election.
Much of the momentum has been credited to former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who led efforts to register new voters and energize Democratic turnout in the two years after losing to Kemp by a narrow margin in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
“This is a moment for me that I have dreamed about,” said Abrams, who served as the presiding officer for Monday’s Electoral College meeting.
“We stand not for ourselves or for our party, but for the people of Georgia. It is on their behalf that we took up this charge to be electors. It is on their behalf that we are ensuring that the nation is led by a good man who believes in the soul of the nation and all its people.”
Also playing key roles in the meeting were U.S. Rep.-elect Nikema Williams, who last month won the seat held by the late Congressman John Lewis, and state Rep. Calvin Smyre, the longest-serving member of the Georgia House of Representatives.
“We’ve come a long, long way in Georgia, and we’ve got a lot to be proud of,” said Smyre, a Democrat who also voted for former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as an Electoral College member.
The Electoral College vote came on the first day of the three-week early voting period ahead of Georgia’s U.S. high-stakes runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Democrats will gain control of the White House and Congress if challengers Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff both beat Republican incumbent U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, called Monday a “defining moment in American history” as he cast his ballot at an early-voting precinct in Atlanta.
“Georgia is at the center of it,” Warnock said. “Let’s show up the way Georgia does.”
Amid Monday’s festivities for Georgia Democrats, Trump has still refused to concede defeat as he continues lobbing claims of ballot-casting and voting machine fraud.
Courts in Georgia and across the country have shot down lawsuits filed by Trump’s allies and his campaign due to procedural issues and lack of evidence, though some suits are still pending.
Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court last Friday refused to take up a Texas case challenging Georgia’s election results that many local Republican lawmakers supported.
Republican Party electors met at the Capitol Monday to cast their votes for Trump even though Kemp certified Democrats’ slate of electors. Georgia law requires the governor to certify Electoral College members from only the party that won the state’s popular vote.
Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer said Republicans picked their own Electoral College members because “[Trump’s] lawsuit contesting the Georgia election is still pending.”
With Trump pressing to overturn the election’s outcome, Georgia Republicans are framing Senate runoff wins for Warnock and Ossoff as a doomsday scenario for conservatives as they seek to turn out voters for Loeffler and Perdue.
“We need you to make a plan, find your polling place and get out and vote,” said Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman. “Save the American Dream.”
Early voting starts on Dec. 14 for upcoming U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Nearly 200,000 Georgia voters may have been improperly purged from the state’s voter rolls and should be restored by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office before the Jan. 5 runoff elections, a lawsuit filed in federal court alleges.
The suit filed by four voting-rights groups comes as Raffensperger’s office fends off separate litigation from President Donald Trump’s allies seeking to overturn Georgia’s presidential election, after certified results show President-elect Joe Biden won by 11,779 votes.
Judge Steve Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia heard arguments Thursday from the suing groups and Raffensperger’s office, which has argued the purge claims lack proof and that the lawsuit was filed too late.
The purge suit argues more than 68,000 voters had their registrations canceled in 2019 despite still residing in Georgia, while another roughly 130,000 voters were removed from the rolls as part of a faulty process for verifying address changes.
It asks the court to restore registrations for “wrongfully removed” voters in time to cast ballots in Georgia’s two hotly anticipated U.S. Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5. If restored, those potential voters could have a huge impact on turnout for the runoffs as Republicans push to keep control of the Senate.
“It could have a substantial effect on the upcoming runoff,” said Gerald Griggs, an Atlanta attorney representing the suing groups. “That’s why it’s important that people understand that voting rights are at stake here in Georgia.”
In particular, the lawsuit faults Raffensperger’s office for not hiring a third-party vendor licensed with the U.S. Postal Service to verify address changes via a national database, a charge that election officials say is baseless since they argue roll-cleaning vendors do not need to be licensed under federal law.
Raffensperger’s office has repeatedly dismissed claims of improper roll purges, noting state law requires officials to remove voters from registration lists if they have not voted in general elections or responded to warning notices for several years.
At a news conference Thursday, Georgia’s election system manager, Gabriel Sterling, said state officials gave the roughly 198,000 voters at risk of being canceled ample notice to restore their registrations – even going so far as to release a list of those voters publicly.
“They’re basically misunderstanding how this process works,” Sterling said of the suing groups. “That’s the underlying part of it.”
The four suing groups are the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter Fund, the Washington, D.C.-based Transformative Justice Coalition, the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Texas-based Southwest Voter Education Project.
Their lawsuit follows previous litigation brought by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ group Fair Fight Action last December, which prompted Raffensperger’s office to restore around 22,000 Georgia voters back to inactive status rather than remove them from the rolls.
The current purge lawsuit’s claims stem from findings by a group run by investigative journalist Greg Palast, who previously found registration cancellations for hundreds of thousands of Georgia voters by Gov. Brian Kemp while he was secretary of state ahead of his win in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
A top Raffensperger deputy also recently called Palast a “shill for Stacey Abrams,” according to the lawsuit. Abrams lost the governor’s race to Kemp in 2018 and has since played a leading role in the push to boost voter registration and Democratic turnout in Georgia.
Amid fierce competition in the Jan. 5 runoffs, the latest purge lawsuit marks a remarkable alliance between Raffensperger’s office and the Georgia Republican Party, which intervened in the case despite excoriating the secretary of state over his handling of fraud claims stemming from the Nov. 3 election.
GOP Chairman David Shafer, who is a former state lawmaker, has joined the Trump campaign in a lawsuit currently pending in Fulton County Superior Court to overturn the presidential election results and order a redo of the election. Trump has called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people.”
Other Trump-backed suits aim for the Republican-controlled General Assembly to pick Georgia’s 16 Electoral College members, which would likely hand those votes to Trump. Kemp, the state’s top Republican, has repeatedly said the legislature does not have authority to do so under Georgia law.
As of Friday afternoon, no court in Georgia has found any fraud claims from the Nov. 3 election to be valid. Several cases have been dismissed, with appeals still pending.
Raffensperger and Sterling – who are both Republicans – have repeatedly said there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 elections.
The Jan. 5 runoff elections pit Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats control of the White House and both houses of Congress for at least the next two years.
Early voting for the runoffs starts on Monday, Dec. 14.
One of Georgia’s most powerful Republican lawmakers wants the General Assembly to pick the state’s chief election official instead of voters following backlash over the 2020 presidential election.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said Thursday he’ll seek a constitutional amendment in the upcoming legislative session that starts next month to let state lawmakers appoint Georgia’s secretary of state.
Ralston said his decision comes amid a flood of complaints from his North Georgia constituents over Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s handling of the presidential election. He cited Tennessee, Maine and New Hampshire as states where the legislature chooses the election chief.
“I think it’s the only way to right this ship,” Ralston said. “I don’t do this lightly. I don’t do this disrespectfully to the incumbent who I have personal regard for, but I do it because we have a job to do as members of the House and members of the Senate.”
Raffensperger has faced a storm of criticism from President Donald Trump and his allies for not re-verifying absentee ballot signatures as part of recent recounts that confirmed Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden in Georgia by 11,779 votes.
Raffensperger’s office bashed the move by Ralston as a “power grab,” signaling the controversy over Georgia’s election is widening schisms between many of the state’s top Republican leaders.
“Ralston and the Trump campaign want to give the General Assembly the power to select winners of elections and violate the will of the people,” said Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs.
Raffensperger’s office skipped out on a Georgia House Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Thursday on election issues, citing ongoing litigation. Ralston called that absence “disappointing.”
Thursday’s hearing was the second over the past week in which former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – who is Trump’s personal attorney – and others aired hours of fraud claims that election officials have repeatedly dismissed and no court has found valid so far amid several lawsuits.
Democratic lawmakers condemned the hearing, calling it a sham put on by Republicans to stir emotions among Trump’s base of supporters rather than probe any actual election irregularities.
“Giving more fuel to this fire will do no one any good,” said outgoing House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville. “Changing the rules simply because you lose an election is not good policy.”
The hearing also came as lawmakers gear up to propose revisions to Georgia’s absentee voter ID laws when the General Assembly meets for the 2021 legislative session starting next month.
Rudolph Giuliani lets loose with election fraud claims at a Georgia House hearing on Dec. 10, 2020. (Georgia House video)
Georgia lawmakers hosted former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on Thursday for a second time to air unchecked claims of fraud in Georgia’s presidential election.
Giuliani, who is President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, rolled out witnesses and experts involved in a lawsuit to overturn the election results at a Georgia House Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.
Many of those same witnesses spoke before a state Senate Judiciary subcommittee last Thursday, during which Giuliani urged the panel’s mostly Republican lawmakers to appoint electors to the Electoral College who would cast Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in Trump’s favor next week.
Representatives from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office did not attend Thursday’s hearing, citing ongoing litigation. Raffensperger and his deputies have repeatedly sought to debunk claims of machines flipping votes and alleged mail-in ballot fraud spread by Trump and his allies.
Certified election results that have undergone two recounts since mid-November show Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden in Georgia by 11,779 votes. Trump has called the election “rigged” and pressured Gov. Brian Kemp to overturn the results in Georgia.
Speaking on video after contracting COVID-19, Giuliani hurled accusations of fraud that no court in Georgia has found valid so far and said Atlanta election workers shown in a controversial surveillance video “look like they’re passing out dope, not just ballots.”
“Every single vote should be taken away from Biden,” Giuliani said.
At one point, Giuliani could be heard in the background of Thursday’s hearing telling his legal team to send a video of election activities in Coffee County to right-wing news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.
Georgia’s election system manager, Gabriel Sterling held a news conference Thursday afternoon to debunk many of the fraud claims made at the House hearing. He said the hearing format worsens doubt in the state’s election integrity since the claims do not face real questioning.
“Giving oxygen to this continued disinformation is leading to a continuing erosion of people’s belief in our elections and our processes,” Sterling said.
Democratic lawmakers condemned Thursday’s hearing, calling it a sham put on by Republicans to stir emotions among Trump’s base of supporters rather than probe any actual election irregularities.
“This is an embarrassing day in Georgia House of Representatives history,” said state Rep. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs.
The hearing came as lawmakers gear up to propose revisions for Georgia’s absentee voter ID laws when the General Assembly meets for the 2021 legislative session starting next month.
The Georgia Senate Republican Caucus has already called for requiring photo identification to vote by mail, banning absentee-ballot drop boxes and eliminating the ability of Georgians to request a mail-in ballot without a reason.
“I think it’s a very simple,” said state Rep. Rick Williams, R-Milledgeville. “We need a verification of the signatures in each one of the elections offices across the state.”
U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler (left) and David Perdue (right), both Republicans from Georgia, are campaigning to hold their seats in runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Georgia’s two U.S. senators and more than a dozen Republican state lawmakers are backing a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas on Tuesday seeking to overturn the certified results of Georgia’s presidential election.
U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans, said in a joint statement late Tuesday that they support the Texas lawsuit despite opposition from Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office, which called the suit “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.”
The Texas challenge comes as Georgia lawmakers prepare for another hearing on Thursday to air claims of fraud in Georgia’s election system that have fallen flat so far in several federal lawsuits brought by allies of President Donald Trump, who has refused to concede defeat in last month’s general election.
The suit also comes as Republicans pin their hopes on Perdue and Loeffler to prevail in the Jan. 5 runoff elections, which will decide the balance of power in the Senate and would give President-elect Joe Biden’s administration free rein over policymaking if both Democratic candidates win.
Filed before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the suit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeks to block Electoral College members in four states – Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – where Biden won the popular vote. It asks the court to let those states’ Republican-controlled legislatures pick the electors, likely overturning more than 20 million votes and handing victory to Trump.
Loeffler and Perdue hailed the Texas suit as well as other Trump-supporting legal challenges involving fraud claims that federal judges have shot down in recent weeks and election officials from both political parties in multiple states including Georgia have dismissed as baseless.
“This isn’t hard and it isn’t partisan,” said the joint statement from Loeffler and Perdue. “It’s American. No one should ever have to question the integrity of our elections system and the credibility of its outcomes.”
Their comments echoed praise for the Texas suit that came earlier Tuesday from 16 Georgia Senate members including Senate Majority Whip Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonegah, who jointly called it a “very important case.”
The Texas suit argues Georgia logged several thousand votes favoring Biden that should have gone for Trump due to “statistical improbability,” citing certain figures for mail-in ballot rejection rates that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office has disputed as inaccurate.
Perdue and Loeffler last month called for Raffensperger’s resignation over the fraud claims, prompting backlash from state election-system manager Gabriel Sterling who said the move helped open a “floodgate of crap” from conspiracy theorists. Raffensperger and Sterling, both Republicans, have said they’ll still vote for Perdue and Loeffler despite the controversy.
Many state senators who praised the lawsuit held a hearing last week that allowed hours of unchecked fraud claims from witnesses and experts brought by Trump’s personal attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The House is expected to follow suit with Thursday’s scheduled hearing.
Democratic state lawmakers have condemned the hearings as open forums for conspiracy theories and empty allegations that aim to placate staunch Trump voters who have decided the presidential election was “rigged” rather than actually probe legitimate fraud claims.
State Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, who said she’s received death threats following her attendance at last week’s hearing, mocked Loeffler and Perdue for backing the out-of-state lawsuit, saying they “are welcome to be the senators from the great state of Texas.”
“As elected officials, our job is to encourage the public’s faith in the democratic process,” Parent said. “Continuing to engage with baseless allegations of fraud is irresponsible and immoral.”
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman appointed to retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat earlier this year, is facing Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in one of next month’s runoffs. Perdue, a Sea Island businessman, has drawn investigative journalist Jon Ossoff in the other.
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14.
Gov. Brian Kemp doubled down on his refusal to call an election-focused special session and pledged to address Georgia’s election issues in the upcoming legislative session during a conference with state lawmakers on Monday.
Kemp is facing intense criticism from President Donald Trump and his allies for not intervening in Georgia’s presidential election, which certified results show Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes.
Some Republican lawmakers are pressuring Kemp to call a special session before next month to pick Electoral College members who will vote for Trump instead of Biden, despite the certified results from the Nov. 3 general election.
Speaking before state lawmakers Monday in Athens, Kemp said state law prevents him from calling a session to choose different Electoral College members. It only lets lawmakers pick the presidential electors if the election could not be held on its scheduled date, he said.
Instead, Kemp said he wants lawmakers to focus on crafting legislation aimed at bolstering the state’s voter ID laws in the regular legislative session that starts in mid-January.
“I am confident that when the legislature reconvenes in January, we will have ample time to address any issues that have come to the attention of the members of the General Assembly, my office [and] the public over the last few weeks,” Kemp said.
The three-day Biennial Institute for Georgia Legislators is held every two years at the University of Georgia in Athens and convenes General Assembly members to talk policy and procedure ahead of next month’s regular session.
In a luncheon speech, the governor highlighted successful bills his administration backed in the most recent legislative session on foster care, criminal gangs, human trafficking, health care and hate crimes.
That legislation came as Georgia confronted the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered businesses and forced students to take virtual classes from home in March.
“Each of these are great achievements and worthy of celebrating,” Kemp said. “But make no mistake: This is no time to rest on our laurels or take our eye off the ball.”
Kemp said his administration’s approach to seeking balance between public health and economic interests “has shown promising signs of success,” despite an increase in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks that health experts expect to worsen during the winter holidays.
The governor said he is working with nursing homes and hospitals to help boost short-handed staff as part of $250 million in emergency funds the state plans to spend on staff augmentation.
The biennial conference, which has drawn many prominent Georgia lawmakers and elected officials including Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, also featured panels Monday on rural issues, gambling opportunities and tax breaks.
This story previously stated President-elect Biden won Georgia by 11,784 votes. The correct margin is 11,779 votes.
