Atlanta attorney Lin Wood speaks at a rally for President Donald Trump in Buckhead on Nov. 7, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A federal judge tossed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to block the presidential election results in Georgia from being certified in a hearing that pitted attorneys for a firebrand supporter of President Donald Trump against a surprising tag-team of Republican and Democratic defendants.
The suit, brought by Atlanta attorney Lin Wood, sought a restraining order to halt the results’ certification and compel another hand recount of Georgia’s more-than 5 million ballots, despite the fact a hand recount was done as part of an expanded audit of the results over the past week.
U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg dismissed the case after a nearly three-hour hearing in which he found Wood brought no real evidence or proof that he had been harmed by alleged issues with Georgia’s election system.
“To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and potential disenfranchisement that I find has no basis in fact or in law,” said Grimberg, who is a Trump appointee.
Attorneys representing Wood alleged outside monitors were kept too much at arms-length from observing the recount and took aim at a recent legal settlement making it tougher to reject absentee ballots due to invalid signatures.
Citing several sworn statements, Wood’s suit argued the stricter signature-verification rules made it impossible to tell whether mail-in votes were cast fraudulently, prompting the need for a new recount to involve scrutinizing signatures on absentee ballot envelopes.
But lawyers from often at-odds parties representing both Republican and Democratic sides took turns criticizing Wood’s lawsuit at a hearing Thursday, rejecting both its legal merits and framing it as an ominous attempt to disenfranchise Georgia voters.
“The election is over, and rather than accept that his preferred candidate has lost, [Wood] seeks the largest disenfranchisement of eligible electors since the abolition of the poll tax and other vestiges of Jim Crow in the state of Georgia,” said Russ Willard, an attorney representing Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office.
Attorneys for Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both prominent Georgia Republicans, were joined by legal teams for the Democratic Party of Georgia and the NAACP’s Georgia chapter, marking an unusual cast of co-defendants attempting to defeat a Trump-backed suit.
“Your Honor, [Wood] literally seeks to strip millions of Georgians, each one an American citizen, of their right to vote … [and] that’s simply astonishing,” said Kevin Hamilton, an attorney representing the state Democratic Party.
Wood’s attorney, Ray Smith brushed off attacks on the suit as lacking real evidence, arguing in court Thursday that his case “provided a lot of testimony as well as almost 15 affidavits” to show Georgia’s recount was conducted in the shadows.
“We believe we’ve got lots of evidence,” Smith said.
Much of that evidence hung on witness testimony from Susan Voyles, a 20-year election worker from Sandy Springs and active Republican who claimed she counted dozens of mail-in ballots that aroused suspicions of fraud due to their unusually “pristine” condition.
Willard, representing the attorney general’s office, chalked up that testimony as well as the suit’s challenging of beefed-up rules for signature verification set in March as baseless and desperate.
“[The] plaintiff has adopted a scattershot approach … to try to clothes-hook as many constitutional claims as possible in order to get relief,” Willard said.
The judge agreed, noting especially that Wood’s allegations of poor access to the recount for outside monitors was moot since constitutional due-process rights likely do not extend to election observers.
“Monitoring an audit in an election is not a constitutional right,” Grimberg said. “Monitoring an election is not a life, is not a liberty and is not a property.”
Grimberg also cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s admonition for judges not to “meddle” with the power of state election officials to conduct federal elections, particularly when asked to do so by just a single voter like Wood.
The judge did, however, leave the door open for Trump and the Republican Party to join the lawsuit and boost its chances for possible future success, noting the president’s absence in the suit as the losing candidate in the election was “extremely significant.”
“That would have certainly changed the analysis when it comes to standing,” Grimberg said.
Thursday’s hearing came as Raffensperger’s office hustled to wrap up and release results of the nearly weeklong hand recount. Certification of Georgia’s election results are due Friday.
Lines were sparse outside the Cobb County Regional Library voter precinct through noon on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Election officials in Georgia are poised to wrap up a statewide hand recount of the 2020 presidential election Wednesday night after days of fending off unfounded fraud allegations and wrangling in some counties that located previously uncounted ballots.
County election workers across the state have hustled since last Friday to re-tally more than 5 million ballots all by hand in an unprecedented effort to audit results from the first presidential contest in nearly three decades to be won by a Democratic candidate in Georgia.
By late Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden held a lead in Georgia over President Donald Trump by 12,781 votes, a margin that had shrunk by 1,375 votes over the past week as uncounted ballots were found in Floyd, Fayette, Douglas and Walton counties through the recount.
With the recount underway, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his top deputies have batted down unproven claims of election irregularities brandished by Trump and his allies, ranging from ballot harvesting and dead voters to unverified signatures and late-arriving absentee ballots.
Raffensperger has been caught in the crossfire within his own political party as Trump and many of his supporters blasted the state’s Republican elections chief, who in turn claimed a top U.S. senator allegedly pushed him to trash lawful mail-in ballots.
Raffensperger’s office set a deadline for counties to wrap up the recount by midnight ahead of a separate deadline Friday for the state to certify the election results, marking the next step in a process to have Georgia’s 16 electoral votes likely cast for Biden on Jan. 6.
“We feel good about where we stand right now,” said Gabriel Sterling, voting system manager for the secretary of state’s office. “I’m prayerful that we can get through this and we can find a way to have everybody at the end of the day … have faith in the outcome of the election regardless of how it came out.”
Nearly all of the state’s 159 counties either had no difference between their ballot counts on election night and after the audit, or their counts differed by only a few ballots due to small human-error mistakes during the hand recount, Sterling said in a news conference Wednesday.
Twenty-one counties still needed to finish counting and complete quality-control procedures Wednesday including several larger counties like Fulton, Gwinnett and Chatham, as well as the four counties where officials located around 5,800 previously uncounted ballots.
Of those, Walton and Douglas counties each turned up just below 300 additional ballots after workers did not initially upload memory cards to store the vote counts. Walton’s added votes went for Trump by a 176-vote margin, while Douglas’ ballots increased Biden’s lead by 28 votes.
Fayette County, which located 2,755 ballots, also did not initially upload a memory card. Those ballots trimmed Biden’s lead by 449 votes in favor of Trump.
In Floyd County, 2,524 early-voting ballots could not be scanned late last month due to a technical issue and went unnoticed at the county elections office until the recount, cutting Biden’s lead by another 778 votes. Raffensperger has called for Floyd’s elections director to resign.
In all, adding the uncounted ballots to the 5 million-vote pile trimmed Biden’s original lead from 14,156 votes to 12,781 votes, giving the former vice president a close but comfortable advantage as state officials work to certify the final results by Friday.
“The process worked,” Sterling said. “We were able to find those votes and get them in the mix. People should have even better faith in the process.”
Even so, Trump allies including Georgia Republican Party leaders, Atlanta attorney Lin Wood and outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville have slammed Georgia’s election system and cast doubt on the recount’s accuracy in recent days.
In particular, Wood sued Raffensperger and the State Election Board last Friday to have a federal judge block Georgia’s election results from being certified, alleging state officials improperly signed an agreement in March to change rules for verifying voter signatures on mail-in ballots.
Raffensperger has called the lawsuit’s claims “basically nonsense,” noting the same rate of absentee ballots were rejected due to invalid signatures in the Nov. 3 general election as during the 2018 midterms. He argued his office had tightened rules on signature verification since 2018, not watered them down.
In interviews with several media outlets this week, Raffensperger has also alleged U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. – a top Trump ally – suggested he throw out all mail-in ballots in counties with high amounts of invalid signatures. Graham has denied making that suggestion.
“In this state, voters cast their ballots in secret so that no political party or candidate can ever intimidate or threaten a voter into changing his or her vote,” Raffensperger said. “We will continue to protect the integrity of the vote.”
Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock (left) and Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (right) are campaigning to win a runoff election on Jan. 5, 2020. (Photos by Beau Evans)
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her runoff opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock are squaring off over how to bolster health care and insurance coverage amid a bruising stretch of campaign attack ads in Georgia.
Warnock, the Democratic senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has fixed health care as the hallmark issue of his campaign to unseat Loeffler, who until recently gave few insights on the campaign trail about her health-care stances beyond opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Loeffler’s office unveiled a broad plan last Friday calling for passage of several bills including incentives for telehealth options, expanding short-term health plans pushed by the Trump administration and creating a new federal official tasked with lowering prescription drug prices through trade negotiations with other countries.
The plan by Loeffler, a Republican Atlanta businesswoman, also pledges to protect insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, a central part of the Obama-era ACA health-care bill. On that point, Warnock and several health-care advocates on Monday said Loeffler’s plan falls flat.
Warnock supporters, including a former acting chief of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Monday argued a bill Loeffler sponsored on short-term health insurance contains loopholes potentially allowing insurers to avoid paying treatment costs for patients with pre-existing conditions.
“These so-called plans that are being laid out by the Republicans are no plan at all,” Warnock said in one of two virtual news conferences Monday. “Simply announcing that you’re going to cover pre-existing conditions does not answer the question.”
Loeffler’s campaign dismissed the criticism from Warnock Tuesday and went on the offensive, calling his plan too extreme for Georgians who favor less government involvement in their health insurance. Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson sought to assure the senator’s plan would be less costly and include coverage of pre-existing conditions.
“Warnock wants a government takeover which would eliminate your private insurance, skyrocket costs and turn your doctor’s office into the DMV,” Lawson said.
Warnock, who was joined in a virtual conference Monday by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., has advocated expanding Medicaid in states like Georgia and empowering the federal government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. He also favors adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act.
Clashes between Loeffler and Warnock look to ramp up in the coming weeks ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff election, as both campaigns pour millions of dollars into television ads and the two contenders meet for a face-to-face debate on Dec. 6.
A pivot by Loeffler to focus more on health care in the race could signal her push to compete with Warnock on an issue he dominated in the months before the Nov. 3 special election, when Loeffler was forced to fend off a fierce challenge from fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville.
GOP Sen. David Perdue has also faced broadsides from his Democratic opponent, investigative journalist Jon Ossoff, over health care and insurance coverage in Georgia’s other heated runoff race, which together with the Loeffler-Warnock contest could decide the balance of power in the Senate.
Perdue, like Loeffler, has said he supports protecting coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions, while Ossoff, like Warnock, has argued Republican-backed legislation contains loopholes allowing insurers to deny paying for treatment.
Ossoff also slammed Perdue on Tuesday for declining to participate in a Dec. 6 debate, saying the senator “shouldn’t run for re-election” if he shirks public debate. Perdue’s campaign accused Ossoff of having “lied repeatedly” in two debates before the Nov. 3 election as the reason for not participating next month.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Top national Republican officials have rushed to Perdue’s and Loeffler’s sides at rallies over the past week in a bid to block Democrats from controlling the Senate. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to join the Republican duo at two rallies on Friday.
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
President-elect Joe Biden (left) maintains a close lead in Georgia over President Donald Trump (right) as a statewide hand recount nears completion. (Biden and Trump campaign videos)
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to maintain his lead in Georgia as a statewide audit of nearly 5 million ballots wraps up shortly, despite the discovery Monday of around 2,600 uncounted ballots in Floyd County that went mostly for President Donald Trump, according to a top state elections official.
Biden, who is poised to be the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992, has held a lead of more than 14,000 votes over the past week and after several news outlets called the race for the former vice president on Friday.
On Monday, the state’s voting system manager, Gabriel Sterling, said around 2,600 votes were found through the audit that began last week after officials in Republican-leaning Floyd County discovered they had failed to upload a memory card containing electronic counts of those votes on Election Day.
Locating those 2,600 votes is set to cut Biden’s lead over Trump by 800 votes in Georgia, leaving the Republican president with a deficit unlikely to be surmounted once the audit’s hand recount finishes by a Wednesday deadline ahead of the election’s formal certification later this week, Sterling said.
“Nothing is making us see any substantive change in the outcome,” said Sterling, a top deputy in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. “It’s verifying what we saw on election night.”
Speaking at a news conference Monday, Sterling also continued to dismiss claims from Trump and his allies of alleged voter fraud in Georgia as state and county officials gear up to hold a pair of pivotal U.S. Senate runoff elections that could decide the balance of power in Congress.
Republican allies of Trump, led in Georgia by outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville, have lodged unfounded claims of ballot harvesting, software tampering, improper signature verification for absentee ballots and voting by dead persons.
State and county election officials have found no evidence in support of those claims pushed by Trump and his allies after counting 4.3 million of the nearly 5 million votes in Georgia as of Monday afternoon, said Sterling, who along with Raffensperger is a Republican.
“Those people out there undermining this thing through crazy, over-the-top claims on cable news, if you have evidence, call us,” Sterling said Monday. “We will investigate any credible leads someone gives us.”
As for the ballots found in Floyd County, Sterling attributed the issue to human error and “gross negligence” on the part of the county’s election director, Robert Brady, who has been asked to resign by Raffensperger’s office.
State officials have been unable to reach Brady to discuss what caused the issue since the Floyd elections director is in quarantine due to COVID-19, Sterling said. An investigator from Raffensperger’s office is in Floyd County now to determine exactly what happened.
Even with the Floyd County issue, Sterling on Monday called the unprecedented statewide audit effort a success as elections boards in the state’s 159 counties closed in on recounting every ballot by hand. He said the state next plans to create a website to publish data on the recount results for transparency.
“We’re about accuracy, we’re about process and we’re about following the law,” Sterling said.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida rallies with Georgia’s Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler at Black Diamond Grill in Forsyth County on Nov. 13, 2020. (Photo Beau Evans)
CUMMING – The hotly contested U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia got off to a bang this week with packed campaign rallies, new attack ads swarming local television airwaves and visits from both of Florida’s senators.
Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida campaigned with Georgia Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on Friday, energizing conservatives at a Forsyth County restaurant just days after Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did the same in Cobb County.
Like Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, Perdue and Loeffler have linked their campaigns ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections in a bid to drive up Republican voter turnout in a state set for a flood of outside dollars and big-name politicians.
“If I win, she wins,” Perdue said at Friday’s rally. “If she wins, I win.”
As the Republican senators stumped for votes in metro Atlanta, Perdue opponent Ossoff criss-crossed the state from Savannah to Columbus this week to maintain voter momentum after the Nov. 3 general election saw Georgia flip to the Democratic presidential nominee for the first time since 1992.
Ossoff, who owns an investigative journalism company, and Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, have focused their campaigns on health-care issues and on contrasting their backgrounds with Perdue and Loeffler, who are both wealthy businesspersons.
“This race is about who you think best represents you,” Warnock said in a new ad released this week. “If you’re looking for a billionaire, I’m not your guy.”
Warnock and Ossoff are both fending off intense attacks as their Republican opponents try to paint the Democratic duo’s policies as too extreme – in a word, “socialist” – for Georgia voters.
Warnock, in particular, is battling attacks from Loeffler that highlight the Atlanta pastor’s past comments criticizing certain law enforcement members and his past involvement with a New York church that hosted Cuba’s Fidel Castro in 1995.
Warnock’s and Ossoff’s campaigns have brushed off those and similar attacks as distractions and diversion tactics meant to stir passions in conservative Georgia voters, while the Democratic candidates continue homing in on issues like health insurance, criminal justice reform and the national COVID-19 response.
The TV ads and campaign stops look to ramp up in the coming weeks with control of the Senate hanging in the balance. Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Republican leaders and groups are marshalling forces in a push to lock down the Senate and keep the Democrat-controlled House and the incoming Biden administration in check. Speaking after Friday’s rally, Florida’s Scott said he’s confident Republicans will turn out the vote for the Perdue-Loeffler ticket on Jan. 5 despite the Democratic voter surge that flipped Georgia for Biden last week.
“You’ve just got to get your votes out,” Scott said. “We did it in Florida, and I know we’re going to do it in Georgia.”
Aiming to invigorate conservative voter enthusiasm even more, Scott and other Republican leaders have echoed President Donald Trump in questioning the results of last week’s presidential election and calling for investigations into ballots cast in states with tight races like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
State election officials across the country from both political parties including Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, have said they’ve found no evidence so far of ballot-casting fraud as Trump and his allies have alleged since last week.
Even so, Raffensperger has warned people from outside Georgia not to relocate to the state with the sole intent to register and cast ballots in the Jan. 5 runoffs, which would be a felony. His warning came on Friday as Georgia launched a statewide hand recount of the nearly 5 million votes in the presidential election. The state’s 159 county elections boards have through Wednesday to wrap up the recount.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders have shown similar confidence as Republicans in their prospects for mustering supporters for another big election turnout on Jan. 5, buoyed again by a massive vote-by-mail effort that drove turnout for the presidential election amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Notably, former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams – who has been widely credited with playing a major role in boosting Democratic turnout this election cycle – has stayed in the national media spotlight over the past week as she seeks to drum up donations for Warnock and Ossoff and inspire another round of huge mail-in voting.
“We have seen what’s possible when we work hard and when we work together,” Abrams said in a recent Twitter video. “We know we can win Georgia. Now, let’s get it done.”
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler speaks during a rally with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at the Cobb County Republican Party headquarters in Marietta on Nov. 11, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida campaigned with Sen. Kelly Loeffler Wednesday at a rally for the freshman senator’s runoff bid, the first of what will likely be many high-profile visits to Georgia ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, is running alongside fellow Republican Sen. David Perdue in a pair of runoffs that are poised to settle the balance of power in the Senate.
Rubio aimed to energize a packed hundreds-strong crowd of supporters Wednesday at the Cobb County Republican Party headquarters in Marietta, where he railed against “radical elements” in the Democratic Party that could hold sway in the Senate if Loeffler and Perdue lose in January.
“This is literally the showdown of all showdowns in terms of politics and what it means,” Rubio said. “This is Georgia’s decision to make, but it’s America that will live with the consequences of that decision.”
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida energizes supporters during a rally for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler at the Cobb County Republican Party headquarters in Marietta on Nov. 11, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Perdue, a corporate executive from Sea Island, was in Washington, D.C., and did not attend Wednesday’s rally, his office said. His wife Bonnie appeared to speak in his stead.
The runoff races between Loeffler and Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock and between Perdue and Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff have thrust Georgia into the national political spotlight with control of the U.S. Senate potentially hanging in the balance.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock in the Jan. 5 runoffs would likely tip the Senate in the Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Republican and Democratic leaders across the country are poised to pull out all the stops in Georgia with huge campaign donations and big-name backers like Rubio expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Ossoff, an investigative journalist, kicked off his runoff campaign on Tuesday by rallying with several Georgia Democratic leaders and health-care advocates in support of the Affordable Care Act, which faces a legal challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has put out a pair of new campaign ads that highlight his humble Savannah upbringing and urge voters to cut through attack ads from Loeffler that are set to roll out in the coming weeks.
Warnock and Ossoff are expected to team up frequently for campaign events ahead of Jan. 5, as are the two Republican senators. Already, Perdue and Loeffler jointly pressed this week for Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to resign following the Nov. 3 presidential election, as state election officials continue brushing aside unproven claims of ballot fraud made by President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered a hand recount of the nearly 5 million ballots cast in Georgia’s presidential election with Biden leading Trump by roughly 14,100 votes. The recount should wrap up by Nov. 20.
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
