Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs have opened a flood of legal challenges over thousands of registered voters and the state’s rules on absentee ballots with less than two weeks to go until Election Day.
In the most far-reaching effort, the Texas-based conservative group True the Vote has lodged challenges against the eligibility of about 365,000 voters in all 159 Georgia counties, homing in on state law that lets local voters challenge the qualifications of other voters in their county.
That effort likely to favor Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler comes as Democrat-aligned groups seeking to restore nearly 200,000 voters to the rolls prepare to file another lawsuit after a federal judge tossed out their prior suit last week.
Meanwhile, the Perdue and Loeffler campaigns have signed onto two Republican-led lawsuits aiming to segregate the ballots of voters newly registered since the Nov. 3 general election and overhaul signature-match rules for absentee ballots. Both lawsuits were dismissed recently and appeals are pending.
Another Republican-backed lawsuit that was dismissed last week sought to outlaw absentee-ballot drop boxes for the runoffs and block county officials from processing mail-in ballots a few weeks before Election Day. State officials are allowing early absentee processing to give counties breathing room amid huge mail-in voting in Georgia due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuits are yet another development in the intense competition for Georgia’s two Senate seats that will settle control of the federal government following President-elect Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump last month.
Perdue and Loeffler will need to overcome challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock to stave off a Democratic takeover of Washington, D.C., for at least the next two years. A win by either Republican incumbent would block that scenario.
The runoff-focused lawsuits also come as Trump and his allies continue casting doubt on Georgia’s election system, particularly its rules for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. Republican officials have also voiced concern out-of-state voters may flock to Georgia to illegally cast ballots in the runoffs.
The county-specific challenges by True the Vote relied on national change-of-address records to allege around 124,000 registered voters have left their county of residence and around 240,000 no longer live in Georgia, according to the group’s website.
“Filing the challenges preemptively, before absentee ballots are opened, will help ensure only legal, eligible votes are counted in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoff elections,” said the group’s founder and president, Catherine Engelbrecht.
Their efforts have met little success so far as elections boards in several counties including Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb have already shot down the challenges, while Muscogee County officials last week let a challenge to more than 4,000 voters move forward.
As counties mull the challenges, the voting rights group Fair Fight – founded by 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – is poised for a legal battle to squash True the Vote’s challenges before they can take effect if any local elections boards approve them.
“Georgia voters have the right to combat these shameful and abusive tactics in federal court, and we look forward to making the case that these challenges violate federal law,” Fair Fight said on Twitter. “Our message to True the Vote: Get out of Georgia and leave our voters alone.”
Meanwhile, four groups suing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to reinstate nearly 200,000 voter registrations are set to file another lawsuit after losing in court last week. The judge ruled the lawsuit came too late, citing hesitancy to tamper with voter rolls so close to Election Day.
A similar too-late-in-the-game judgement last week struck down the Georgia Republican Party’s lawsuit to keep ballots cast by new voters who registered between Nov. 4 and Dec. 7 from being counted in the same batches as other ballots.
A separate lawsuit brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to overhaul how signatures on absentee-ballot envelopes are verified was also tossed by a federal judge this week, though an appeal has been filed.
The Perdue and Loeffler campaigns joined both of those suits.
Also dismissed in federal court last week was a lawsuit brought by the 12th Congressional District Republican Committee that sought to scrap absentee-ballot drop boxes that were installed across Georgia for the Nov. 3 election, and to halt counties from processing mail-in ballots as early as this week.
So far, nearly 2 million Georgia voters have cast ballots by mail or during the three-week early voting period for the Senate runoffs. Early voting started on Dec. 14.
The line stretched around the block at South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton where voters waited in line for hours to cast ballots on the first day of early voting in the Nov. 3 general election on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Lawmakers on a state House committee overseeing elections offered a preview Wednesday of the heated debate over changing Georgia’s rules on mail-in ballots and verifying voter signatures set to play out during the upcoming legislative session.
The House Governmental Affairs Committee took testimony from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his top deputies who want to end no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia and shift to stricter voter ID laws after the controversy of last month’s presidential election.
In the latest of several fraud-focused hearings, Raffensperger urged lawmakers to back absentee-voting law changes to both ease pressure on local election officials and boost confidence in the system’s integrity – despite no evidence of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 election.
He called for ending the ability of voters to request mail-in ballots for any reason in Georgia and requiring stronger ID verification for absentee ballots than signatures on envelopes, such as by using voters’ driver’s licenses instead.
“Blame-shifting is not productive and it doesn’t fix problems,” Raffensperger said. “All of us need to be focused on finding solutions that improve the elections process and make it secure and accessible for voters so there is strong trust and confidence in the system.”
The proposed changes come as Raffensperger faces a storm of criticism from supporters of President Donald Trump, who continues to claim his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes in Georgia was rife with fraud. State election officials have said his claims are not true.
Several Republicans on the committee indicated more changes may be needed for mail-in voting than those pitched by Raffensperger, such as clamping down on mobile voting units outside precincts and increasing security for absentee ballot drop boxes – or even outlawing the boxes entirely.
Others agreed with a proposal by Raffensperger to give his office more power to remove poor-performing county elections officials and board members, but added he ought to install more state monitors in local offices to oversee counting procedures on Election Day.
“Perception becomes reality,” said Rep. Darlene Taylor, R-Thomasville. “And with our elections, this has caused a lot of lack of confidence in our election process. … A lot of this is a local issue [and] I think you need to have more oversight over them.”
Meanwhile, suspicions of voter suppression are growing among legislative Democrats worried Raffensperger and Republicans may use the fraud claims as an excuse to overhaul election laws too much during the General Assembly session that starts next month, potentially disenfranchising voters.
Their fears stem from the Republican-controlled state legislature’s ability to revise election rules at a time when Democrats are making gains in Georgia, most recently with Biden’s presidential win, which benefited from huge numbers of mail-in votes cast amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No-excuse absentee voting has been used safely and effectively by both parties since 2005,” the Georgia Senate Democratic Caucus wrote on Twitter. “Ending the practice in order to try and turn back the tide of Democratic participation in Georgia is voter suppression.”
Raffensperger’s office sought to frame no-excuse absentee voting as a burden on county election officials who were swamped with around 1.3 million mail-in ballots last month and forced to effectively run three separate elections for absentee, early and in-person voting.
Struggles in places like Fulton County to tally thousands of absentee ballots in the intensely close election also worsened many Georgians’ suspicions of fraud, highlighting how ill-equipped the state’s election system is to handle large numbers of mail-in ballots, said Raffensperger’s general counsel, Ryan Germany.
“We’re in a state where you’re going to continue to have close elections, where you’re going to continue to have very spirited responses on both sides,” Germany said. “The processes are designed to promote confidence, and we need to make sure all of our processes are set up that way.”
The 2021 legislative session of the General Assembly starts on Jan. 11, days after the hotly contested U.S. Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, which are shaping up for similarly tight results as the presidential contest. With control of the federal government hanging in the balance, turnout is expected to be historically high.
Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
A defining moment in American history. The most important election of a lifetime. A must-win.
These are some of the ways next month’s U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia have been described on the campaign trail by competitors from both political parties over the past nearly seven weeks.
This time, the stump-speech slogans are not hyperbole.
On Jan. 5, 2021, incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler will face Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in contests to decide control of America’s federal government, following President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the Nov. 3 general election.
Victories by both Ossoff and Warnock would hand Democrats control of both chambers in Congress and the White House for at least the next two years, a scenario that has flooded Georgia with ad dollars and famous figures as Democrats push to seize power and Republicans look to stop them.
More than 1 million Georgians have already cast ballots in the early-voting period that started Dec. 14, nearing similar numbers seen in the general election’s record-breaking turnout. And the tight races’ fates may hinge on the tens of thousands of new voters who have registered in Georgia since Nov. 3.
The dueling campaigns have been high-octane and fierce, as the Republican incumbents paint their opponents as radical extremists bent on socialist policies, and the Democratic challengers accuse the wealthy senators of caring more for their pocketbooks than the American public’s welfare.
Ossoff, who owns an investigative journalism company, and Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, have lobbed constant attacks at the Republican senators over stock swaps they made early this year that seemed geared to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic, sparking allegations of insider trading.
Democratic leaders have also hammered Perdue and Loeffler over news reports highlighting close ties with companies they regulate as members of several finance-focused Senate committees, most recently by lodging an ethics complaint over trades made by Loeffler’s husband, Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher.
“[We’re] running against the Bonnie and Clyde of politics,” Ossoff said at a recent rally in Atlanta. “We have two United States senators more concerned with using their offices to enrich themselves than taking care of ‘we the people’ who pay their salaries.”
Perdue, a former corporate executive from Sea Island, and Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman before being appointed to the Senate late last year, have called the attacks on their records “lies” and say federal investigators have cleared them of any wrongdoing.
To punch back, Perdue and Loeffler have accused their opponents of being friendly with communist governments and wanting to strip funding from police agencies.
In particular, Loeffler has bashed Warnock for a past sermon in which he said bad-apple police officers have “a thug mentality,” seeking to link him with the “defund-the-police” movement. Perdue has sought to tie Ossoff to Chinese communists over a Hong Kong media company’s past purchase of two of his investigative documentaries.
“The moment of truth is right now,” Perdue said in Atlanta during a seven-city flyover tour. “We’re going to stand up to this onslaught that will perpetrate a socialist state here in Georgia.”
Ossoff and Warnock have rejected those criticisms as distractions, particularly the claim that they favor defunding police. Both have said they support law enforcement reforms like use-of-force restrictions but would not vote for reducing police funding if elected.
“We cannot allow anybody to divide us, to play the politics of distortion and distraction and division,” Warnock said after voting early in Atlanta. “Because one thing I’ve learned is people who have no vision, traffic in division.”
Pumping more emergency relief into businesses and households struggling to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic has also played a central role in the Senate runoffs, as each side accuses the other’s party of blocking legislation in a divided Congress.
Focusing their campaigns on health-care issues, Ossoff and Warnock have taken up the unpassed relief package as a rallying cry for Democratic voters to give Georgia’s current senators the boot for backing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has led months of failed negotiations in the Republican-controlled Senate.
“We can’t afford paralysis in the midst of a crisis like this,” Ossoff said at a recent rally in Atlanta. “We can’t leave the future of our country in the hands of Mitch McConnell.”
Republican leaders have blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for holding up the relief deal after lawmakers passed a $2.2 trillion emergency package in late March. McConnell has pushed in recent weeks to bridge the gap with Pelosi and pass a nearly $1 trillion relief deal that would leave Georgia’s Republican senators less exposed to attacks for the runoffs, according to news reports.
Shortly after voting early in Atlanta, Loeffler said lawmakers were “at the doorstep of the deal” and she was prepared to fly up to Washington to vote on a bill.
“Georgians are counting on us to deliver relief and we’re going to make sure we get that done,” Loeffler said. “What’s at stake here is serving Georgians and making sure they have what they need and stop playing politics.”
With battle lines firmly drawn in the race, the fallout from President Donald Trump’s loss in the Nov. 3 election has thrown a wrench into Republicans’ strategies for energizing enough voters to outmatch last month’s huge Democratic turnout that handed Biden a win in Georgia by 11,779 votes.
While Republican leaders including McConnell have acknowledged Biden’s victory, Perdue and Loeffler still have refused to admit Trump lost as the president continues lobbing fraud claims that state election officials have disputed and courts have shot down.
“There’ll be a time for that if that becomes true,” Loeffler said when asked if Biden won. “But the president has a right to every legal recourse and we’re letting that play out right now.”
Perdue’s and Loeffler’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win comes as the president has driven a wedge into Georgia Republicans by attacking many of the state’s top party leaders including Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The assault on Georgia’s elections has raised fears among Republican leaders that many voters loyal to Trump may skip the runoffs out of disillusionment in the state’s election system and scuttle the party’s chances to keep grip on the Senate.
“I cannot think of a single scenario where continuing to fan the flames of disinformation around election fraud helps us on our January 5th runoff,” Duncan, who was among the first GOP leaders in Georgia to call the election for Biden, said recently on CNN.
Democrats have seized on the rift as fuel to keep scorching Perdue and Loeffler as out of touch with average Georgians, particularly after the Republican senators backed a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn Georgia’s election results that the U.S. Supreme Court tossed Dec. 11.
Biden, who recently visited Atlanta to rally for Ossoff and Warnock, likened the move to a betrayal of Georgians and urged his supporters to replace the incumbent senators with two newcomers who would back his administration’s agenda.
“I think Georgia’s going to shock the nation with the number of people who vote on January 5th,” Biden said. “Am I right, Georgia? Am I right?”
Voters wait in line to cast ballots at Chastain Park in Atlanta during the early-voting period for the U.S. Senate runoffs on Dec. 15, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A lawsuit seeking to restore nearly 200,000 Georgia voters with canceled registrations before the U.S. Senate runoff elections next month was shot down by a federal judge on Wednesday.
Forcing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to overhaul the state’s voter rolls so close to the Jan. 5 runoffs would pose “significant risk of confusion” for carrying out the election, Judge Steve Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled.
The suit claimed more than 68,000 voters had their registrations canceled in 2019 despite still residing in Georgia, while another roughly 130,000 were removed from the rolls as part of a faulty process for verifying address changes.
Raffensperger’s office argued four groups suing to restore those voters to the rolls used inaccurate change-of-address data and did not give enough advance legal notice they planned to file suit.
Jones agreed, noting the groups could have filed suit much sooner than Dec. 2 and that their data showed “discrepancies” with records Raffensperger’s office uses to cancel dead or relocated Georgians. He urged state officials and the suing groups to work together on fixing the discrepancies.
Raffensperger hailed the judge’s ruling Wednesday and called the suing groups’ claims of improper voter purging based on “sloppy analysis.”
“This office abides by the law regardless of criticism and oversees fair and accurate elections open to all eligible voters – but only eligible Georgia voters,” Raffensperger said in a statement.
Attorneys for the suing groups pressed Raffensperger to set up a meeting soon to go over the change-of-address data discrepancies.
“The judge strongly encourages a meeting to resolve these issues,” said Gerald Griggs, an Atlanta attorney representing the suing groups. “We await [Raffensperger] to set the meeting.”
The suing groups framed their push for Raffensperger to restore registrations of “wrongfully removed” voters as a potential game changer for the Senate runoffs, which are expected to be close.
The runoffs 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.
The four suing groups include 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 followed 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 to inactive status rather than remove them from the rolls.
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.
President-elect Joe Biden urges supporters in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2020, to turn out the vote for Georgia’s two Democratic candidates in the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff elections. (Biden campaign video)
President-elect Joe Biden campaigned in Atlanta Tuesday for the state’s two Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate ahead of their runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are locked in a fierce battle with incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, with control of Congress hanging in the balance.
Ossoff, who owns an investigative journalism company, and Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, have been constantly portrayed by their Republican opponents as too extreme for conservative Georgians to tolerate.
Biden, who won the presidential election last month, stepped in to punch back at the attacks from Perdue and Loeffler, pointing out the two Republican senators “fully embraced” a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn Georgia’s election results that the U.S. Supreme Court shot down last week.
“Maybe they thought they represented Texas,” Biden said at the Pullman-Pratt Yard on Tuesday. “Well, if you want to do the bidding of Texas, you should be running in Texas, not in Georgia.”
Perdue and Loeffler said in a joint statement they backed the lawsuit for transparency purposes to make sure President Donald Trump had “every legal recourse available” to probe the election’s integrity following his loss to Biden in Georgia by 11,779 votes.
Biden also pushed back on the images of Ossoff and Warnock as too radical for Georgia, noting he needs Peach State voters to put the two candidates in Congress to advance an agenda of unity after years of divisive politics under Trump.
“If you do, the doors of promise and progress are going to open in Washington,” Biden said. “We’re going to start to get done what we have to do, and more than anything, we’ll make the lives of every Georgian [and] the lives of every American better.”
That bipartisan message has not convinced national and local Republican leaders backing Perdue and Loeffler, who have made fears over a Democrat-controlled Congress and White House central to their runoff campaigns.
A Republican National Committee spokeswoman dismissed Biden’s speech as a smokescreen meant to obscure a “far-left, radical agenda” that Republicans say Ossoff and Warnock, if elected, would follow on orders from national Democratic leaders.
In particular, Republican leaders have sought to tie Ossoff and Warnock to calls from some national Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups to reduce funding for local law-enforcement agencies – though both Democratic candidates in Georgia have stressed they do not support defunding police.
“It’s crazy talk to say you want to defund police,” Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said Tuesday. “I urge all Republicans, Independents and conservative Democrats to make sure we don’t have a government controlled by one party.”
Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway (center) joined Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds (left) and Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman (right) to denounce the “defund police” movement outside the State Capitol in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Fending off the attacks, Ossoff and Warnock have largely stuck to platforms of expanding access to health care, increasing COVID-19 relief, raising the federal minimum wage and strengthening voting rights.
The importance of next month’s election for American government has been the main focal point since the four contenders advanced last month to the runoffs, particularly as Georgia flipped for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1992.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats control of Congress and the White House for at least the next two years. A loss by either would hand Republicans a check in the Senate on the Biden administration.
Biden drove that point home Tuesday in Atlanta, echoing politicians on both sides who have spent weeks traveling to Georgia to stir up voter excitement for their preferred pair of candidates.
“I need two senators from this state who want to get something done, not two senators who are going to get in the way,” Biden said. “Because, look, getting nothing done just hurts Georgia.”
Biden’s visit to Georgia came a day after Electoral College members from states across the country sent him enough votes to formally claim victory over Trump, whose loss in Georgia was certified after two statewide recounts overseen by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
Trump still has not conceded defeat even as his most prominent backers like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, have acknowledged Biden’s win since Monday after weeks of silence.
Instead, the president has stuck to a strategy of casting doubt on the election by making fraud claims, posing a risk that many Georgia voters loyal to Trump may skip the runoff out of disillusionment in the state’s election system and scuttle Republicans’ efforts to keep a grip on the Senate.
Republican leaders are counting on conservative voters to outmatch the huge Democratic turnout seen in the Nov. 3 general election, largely by casting Ossoff and Warnock as “socialist” candidates bent on increasing spending in government programs and carving up police budgets.
“The moment of truth is right now,” Perdue said at a Monday night rally in Atlanta. “We’re going to stand up to this onslaught that will perpetrate a socialist state here in Georgia.”
U.S. Sen. David Perdue urges supporters to turn out the vote at a rally alongside his wife, Bonnie, at the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport on Dec. 14, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Ossoff and Warnock have portrayed their opponents as out of touch with average Georgians by invoking controversial stock trades the wealthy Republican incumbents made early during the COVID-19 pandemic – though Loeffler and Perdue say federal investigators cleared them of any wrongdoing.
“[We’re] running against the Bonnie and Clyde of politics,” Ossoff said at a rally Monday afternoon in Atlanta. “We have two United States senators more concerned with using their offices to enrich themselves than taking care of ‘we the people’ who pay their salaries.”
The three-week early voting period for the Senate runoff elections started on Monday.
Jon Ossoff (left) and Rev. Raphael Warnock (right) stop for a campaign bus-tour rally at the site of the old Turner Field in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia officials will conduct a signature-match audit of absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County to promote faith in the election system ahead of next month’s U.S. Senate runoff elections, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Monday.
The audit comes in response to a “specific allegation” the mail-in signature verification process was not followed properly in Cobb for the Nov. 3 general election, Raffensperger said at a news conference. He did not give details on the allegation.
Re-checking the envelope signatures in Cobb also aims to boost confidence in the integrity of the high-stakes Senate runoffs on Jan. 5 amid fraud claims from President Donald Trump and his allies that have injected doubt into Georgia’s election system, Raffensperger said.
“We stand ready to answer each and every question out there,” Raffensperger said. “Every Georgian should have faith in our elections.”
The audit should take about two weeks to complete, Raffensperger said. Officials then plan to start work on a longer-range statewide study of mail-in signatures Raffensperger said will be done by independent auditors.
Absentee ballots in Georgia are verified once when a voter requests a ballot, then again on signature-bearing envelopes sent to county election boards. Those envelopes are separated from the absentee ballots to protect voters’ ballot selections and preserve voter privacy, according to state law.
Raffensperger and his deputies have faced intense criticism from Trump and many Republican leaders in Georgia for not re-verifying signatures on the record-breaking 1.3 million absentee ballots cast in the Nov. 3 presidential election, which President-elect Joe Biden won by 12,779 votes.
The secretary of state’s office has almost daily sought to dispute fraud claims lobbed by Trump and his allies, noting two statewide recounts of the results found no evidence of any widespread fraud. Courts have also tossed out several lawsuits seeking to overturn the results.
Gabriel Sterling, the state’s election system manager, stressed a main goal of the Cobb audit is to restore faith in Georgia’s elections due to “the pure volume of disinformation and lies” promoted by Trump and his supporters.
Raffensperger in recent weeks has called on state lawmakers to change Georgia’s election laws to add stricter voter ID requirements, eliminate mail-in voting without cause and give state officials power to remove poor-performing county election managers.
Those calls for law changes have not satisfied one of the state’s most powerful Republicans, House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, who last week urged state lawmakers to bring legislation aimed at giving the General Assembly authority to pick the secretary of state, not Georgia voters.
Raffensperger’s announcement also comes as Georgia’s Democratic slate of electors to the Electoral College cast the state’s 16 votes on Monday for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, formally declaring them winners of last month’s presidential contest.
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.
