ATLANTA – On the eve of the second round of the Georgia Senate, a senior state election official on Monday delivered a strong condemnation of President Trump for his false allegations of electoral fraud and made an emotional appeal to Georgians to ignore the president’s disinformation launch their votes on Tuesday in a dispute that will determine Senate control.
The officer, Gabriel Sterling, listed a point-to-point rebuttal of Trump’s complaints about his loss in Georgia to Joseph R. Biden Jr., which the president most recently conveyed over the weekend in a phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a republican companion. Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Raffensperger during the conversation to “find” votes to overturn his defeat in the general election.
“I wanted to scream,” Sterling said at an afternoon news conference, referring to his reaction to the connection between Trump and Raffensperger. Mr. Sterling, manager of implementation of the state’s voting system, said the president’s allegations of fraud were “fully debunked”.
“I personally thought it was something that was not normal, out of place, and no one I know who would be president would do something like that to a secretary of state.”
His stern rebuke offered the most vivid example of how Trump’s sustained attack on Georgia’s voting integrity clouded state policy ahead of Tuesday’s runoff. Even as Trump prepared to campaign in northwest Georgia on Monday night for the two Republican presidents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, party officials feared that his baseless allegations of a fraudulent election would dampen attendance among his base.
The president and Biden were making the last efforts to influence the outcome of the two runoff races that decide not only which party will control the Senate, but also the arc of the political agenda for Biden’s first term. If the two Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, win, the Democrats will control the White House and the two chambers of Congress.
At his Monday night rally in Dalton, northwest Georgia, Trump recycled his baseless allegations that he was a victim of electoral fraud and promised to continue fighting. “It was a fraudulent election, but we are still fighting and you will see what will happen,” he said. Mr Trump also called Tuesday’s vote “one of the most important run-off elections in our country’s history” and praised Perdue and Mrs. Loeffler.
Democrats were trying to rob the White House, he told the crowd, so they could not be allowed to rob the Senate.
He repeated his false claim that he won “by an overwhelming victory” and said that he expects Vice President Mike Pence to “appear to us”, an allusion to Mr. Pence’s role in the presidency of Congress when he meets to certify the Mr. Biden’s victory decision on Wednesday. “He’s a great guy,” he said of Pence. “Of course, if he doesn’t pass, I won’t like him that much.”
Arriving in Atlanta late Monday afternoon, Biden made no direct mention of Trump’s call, but indirectly criticized the president’s strongman tactics.
Addressing a few hundred supporters scattered on the hood and roof of his cars in a downtown parking lot, Biden said Trump was absorbing a tough lesson in democracy.
“As our opposition friends are discovering, all power flows from the people,” said the elected president, adding that politicians cannot “take power”.
Wearing a black mask with the word “VOTE”, Biden encouraged the multiracial audience of Georgians to do just that.
“It is not hyperbole, you can change America,” he said.
That was at the heart of Sterling’s message, just as he begged voters to go to the polls on Tuesday. “If you are a voter in Georgia, if you want your values to be reflected by your elected officials, I beg and strongly encourage you to vote tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t let anyone discourage you. Do not self-suppress your own vote. “
Hours before Trump’s appearance in Dalton, many of his diehard supporters defended his call to Raffensperger.
Kennesaw’s Neal Fitzgibbons said the president just wanted the secretary of state to “look very closely at all the irregularities we saw.”
Mr. Fitzgibbons cited many of the same dismissed statements that the president made.
“Things were questionable, if not entirely stolen, and should be examined,” he said.
Biden and Trump’s visits increased the intensity of disputes that have already become the most expensive Senate disputes in U.S. history. Including the campaign before the second round, more than $ 469 million was spent on the Perdue-Ossoff contest, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and more than $ 362 million was spent on the Loeffler-Warnock race.
As they did throughout the race, Republicans continued to warn on Monday of a terrible fall in extreme left-wing socialism if Democrats gain control of Congress and the White House.
And Democrats are arguing that Trump sought nothing less than to nullify the electorate’s will and undermine democracy with his appeal to Raffensperger.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Pence expanded on the Republican message by visiting a mega-church in the city of Milner, in central Georgia.
Faced with an image of an American flag and two screens that declared: “DEFEND THE MAJORITY”, said Pence, “we need Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler to disrupt the agenda of the radical left in Washington, DC” as the crowd sang “Four more years” and “Stop stealing”.
Pence did not mention the president’s call on Saturday to Raffensperger, first reported by The Washington Post. Several legal experts said the president may have violated state and local laws, although they also said criminal prosecution was unlikely.
However, Georgia’s election officials on Monday received at least two formal calls for investigations into whether Trump violated state laws.
In a Monday appearance in Conyers, a suburb east of Atlanta, Ossoff, the head of a video production company that is challenging Perdue, sought to draw parallels between Trump’s call and Georgia’s long history of suppressing voters and disenfranchisement.
“The President of the United States on the phone tries to intimidate Georgia’s election officials to reject their votes,” said Ossoff at a meeting of volunteers preparing to campaign. “Let’s send a message: don’t come to Georgia and try to tamper with our voting rights.”
Among ordinary Democrats, the president’s phone call only increased his anger and his desire to push the senators who had aligned themselves so closely with Trump out of office.
Hillary Drummond Simpson, a retired elementary and high school teacher, said she was perplexed by the support the president still had. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand what they look for in a leader.”
Verdaillia Turner, who was in Conyers to help with the campaign, said the president’s strong arm tactic could help Democrats gain momentum. “It’s like a beautiful, perfect storm, and all eyes are on us,” said Turner, president of the Federation of Teachers of Georgia.
Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman facing Warnock, avoided questions about Trump and his phone call while campaigning across the state before joining the president on Monday night. “My only focus is tomorrow, January 5,” she said at an Atlanta airport.
At the rally on Monday night, and at the beginning tweet, Mrs. Loeffler he said he would join about a dozen American senators on Wednesday to vote against certifying the election results that guarantee Biden’s victory.
Perdue, who is in quarantine because of possible exposure to the coronavirus, appeared on Sunday night on a Fox News program, where he said he did not think the president’s pressure campaign on Raffensperger would affect the election.
Mr. Perdue blamed Mr. Raffensperger for the leaked recording of the hour-long conversation.
He also defended Trump’s claims about electoral fraud. “What the president said is exactly what he has said in recent months, that is, in the last two months anyway, we had some irregularities in the November election and he wants some answers. He has not yet received them from the Secretary of State. “
Although Georgia has suffered a series of problems in administering the elections recently, with long lines, delayed results and technical failures, some election officials have expressed confidence that Tuesday’s election will go well.
Fulton County officials said 370,000 votes had already been cast there. Although he did not specifically mention Mr. Trump, Fulton County Electoral Director Richard Barron spoke of an “audio recording last night”, in which Fulton County was mentioned more than a dozen times.
On the tape, Mr. Trump made a series of allegations about electoral fraud by Fulton County, including allegations of what he called “ballot filling” Raffensperger’s office said these allegations were investigated and dismissed as unfounded.
“There has been a lot of misinformation out there,” said Barron. “We don’t have the resources to answer each one. And we have focused on preparing for tomorrow and conducting the elections legally and fairly. “
At his press conference, Mr. Sterling spent some time analyzing several false individual claims made by the president or his lawyers. They claimed that thousands of votes were cast in Georgia by those under the age of 18, who were not registered to vote, registered late or registered with a postal box instead of a home address. The secretary of state’s office investigated the allegations, Sterling said, and did not find a single ballot issued by anyone in either category.
He added that Raffensperger does not have a brother named Ron who works for a Chinese technology company, as stated by one of the conspiracies retweeted by the president.
In fact, said Sterling, Raffensperger does not have a brother named Ron.
Richard Fausset and Rick Rojas reported from Atlanta, and Maggie Astor of New York. The report was contributed by Astead W. Herndon Dalton, Ga., and Stephanie Saul and Shane Goldmacher of New York.