Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stands by assertion that Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed the possibility of discarding some mail-in ballots
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stands by his assertion that Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed the possibility of discarding some mail-in ballots in the state, according to a report. Both Graham and Raffensperger are Republicans.
"He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters, and I got the sense that he implied that then you could throw those out," Raffensperger said in an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer.
He added, "It's an implication to look hard and see how many ballots you can throw out."
Raffensperger reiterated that the Department of Elections has "a signature match in place," adding that, "we've got signature matched when you request a ballot and then [it has] photo ID," he added.
Asked if he wanted to find ways to get rid of legally cast ballots, Sen. Graham told CNN, "That's ridiculous."
There has been no evidence indicating widespread voter fraud in this year's election, but the estate of Georgia has committed to re-counting all of the ballots by hand.
"Some counties are coming with zero changes and today in Floyd county we found nearly 3,000 votes — about 800 plus for President Trump," Raffensperger said.
"That was a county election error, it wasn't a machine error, but still, that's why you do an audit," he said. "We want to make sure our count is accurate."
Asked if there will be more ballots counted, similar to Floyd County, Raffensperer assured that the count will be thorough to ensure every paper ballot is counted during the audit.
"The error was found and added to the totals, and that's a good thing," he said.
All 159 counties will be done by Nov. 18 and the recertification will be done by Nov. 20.
"But," he said, "it doesn't take the President where he needs to be," Raffensperger said of the re-count.
The Secretary of State says he has recently received multiple death threats, but says he "understands how contentious this is" and will continue "to follow the process."
"I will probably be disappointed. I was rooting for the Republicans to win, obviously," he said. "But I have a process that I have to follow. Integrity in this office matters."
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