ATLANTA – President Trump took to Twitter Friday night to make the baseless claim that the two contests for the Georgia Senate are “illegal and invalid”, an argument that could complicate his efforts to convince his supporters to run for Republican candidates in the two runoff contests that will determine which party controls the Senate.
The president is due to hold a demonstration in Dalton, Georgia, on Monday, the day before election day, and Georgia Republicans expect him to focus his comments on how crucial it is for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the two acting Republican senators.
But Trump continued to make the false claim that Georgia’s electoral system was rigged against him in the November 3 general elections. Some Republican leaders fear that their supporters will take the president’s argument seriously and decide that voting for a “corrupt” system is not worth their time, a development that could deliver the election to Democrats.
Some state strategists and political science experts said Trump’s attack on Georgia’s voting system may be at least partly responsible for the relatively small turnout of Republicans in the conservative strongholds of northwest Georgia, where Dalton is, during the initial voting period. that ended Thursday.
More than 3 million Georgia voters participated in the early voting period, which began on December 14. A strong participation in early voting in heavily democratic areas and among African-American voters suggests that Republicans will need strong performance on election day to keep their Senate seats.
Mr Trump made his statement about Senate disputes on a Twitter topic in which he also made the baseless claim that “massive corruption” occurred in the general election, “which gives us far more votes than necessary to win all elections. States. ”
The president made a specific reference to a Georgia consent decree that he said was unconstitutional. The problems with this document, he argued, render the two Senate contests and the results of his own electoral defeat invalid.
Trump was almost certainly referring to a March consent decree drawn up between the Democratic Party and Republican state officials that helped set standards for judging the validity of signatures on absentee votes in the state.
Trump’s allies argued, unsuccessfully, in failed lawsuits, that the consent decree was illegal because the U.S. Constitution confers the power to regulate Congressional elections for state legislatures. But the National Constitution Center, among others, notes that Supreme Court decisions allow legislatures to delegate their authority to other state officials.
Since losing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, Trump has directed a sustained attack against Georgia’s Republican leaders – including Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – saying they have not taken their claims seriously enough voter fraud. He called Mr. Kemp “a fool” and asked him to resign. At a rally for Loeffler and Perdue last month in Georgia, the president spent considerable time exposing his own electoral complaints, while spending less time supporting the two Republican candidates.