So, Lindsey Graham Totally Pushed the Georgia Secretary of State To Throw Out Votes

So it turns out there is some deep state election interference happening, it’s just not the kind that Republicans are whining about. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (a Republican) shared on Monday that he has been pressured by fellow Republicans to make some ballots disappear by disqualifying them and retake the state for Donald Trump. Among those putting pressure on Raffensperger is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham.

Now one might wonder what a senator from South Carolina is even doing talking to a Secretary of State from Georgia. That seems bonkers just on its own but what’s worse is that Graham was pressuring Raffensperger to find a reason to disqualify ballots. According to The Washington Post:

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.

If that sounds horrifying … it’s because it is. This is a sitting US Senator who is trying to disenfranchise people in another state because he doesn’t like the way the vote went, and he doesn’t want to lose his power if the Georgia Senate runoffs flip the upper house to the Democrats.

“And then he, I got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out for any, if you look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures. So that’s the impression that I got,” Raffensperger told CNN, “It was just an implication of, ‘Look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.'”

Graham is just one of many elected officials who are helping to make Raffensperger’s life miserable by pushing baseless conspiracy theories about the security of Georgia’s elections and trying to undo the state’s flip to blue in the electoral college. Raffensperger has received death threats and constant harassment regarding the election. The fact that he simply continues to say that Georgia’s elections were fair and valid means he’s being bullied by everyone from the President to Senators and many, many Georgians. Again, this is a Republican official.

Graham for his part calls the implication that he would do something so completely unethical “ridiculous.” Which is … ridiculous. Because we know what Graham did and we also know he’s lying about his contact with Secretaries of State (which he should not be having anyway!). And we know how much Lindsey Graham’s word is worth.

He’s not worried about election integrity! He’s using his position to strong-arm people into throwing out ballots. Lindsey Graham doesn’t have a single moral or principle left in his body. He’s sacrificed everything to be a lap dog for the most corrupt President in history and now he’s committing major ethical violations to maybe keep that monster in power, or at least keep himself there.

It was a shame that Graham didn’t lose his election this year to the excellent Jaime Harrison, but I guess we can hold out some hope that he’ll be investigated by someone for election interference because laws and ethics still have to matter somewhere. At least they matter in Georgia, where a Republican Secretary of State is adhering to both even as his own party pushes him not to.

(via: CNN, image: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images)

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Jessica Mason

Jessica Mason (she/her) is a writer based in Portland, Oregon with a focus on fandom, queer representation, and amazing women in film and television. She's a trained lawyer and opera singer as well as a mom and author.

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