Georgia secretary of state on Trump’s false election claims: ‘He just has bad data’

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday that President Donald Trump was working with faulty information when he pushed Raffensperger in a phone conversation Saturday to “find” votes that would overturn the presidential election results.

“As he talked further what was pretty obvious to me is that he just has bad data,” Raffensperger told CNN’s Jake Tapper when asked whether he saw the President’s comments as an order to invent thousands of votes.

“We have the numbers on our side, and that’s why we had our press conference. We showed that of, I think there’s 10,000 dead voters, he said — we had two,” Raffensperger continued. “We had no underage voting at all in the state of Georgia; everyone was 18 during that election. He just has bad data, and when you have good data, you know that you can stand by your results, and our results were accurate.”

Raffensperger’s comments came in the final hours of voting in Georgia’s two runoff elections that will decide the US Senate’s party majority, and in turn the future of President-elect Joe Biden’s proposed agenda.

The Georgia secretary of state has been adamant in defending the results of the presidential election as well as the integrity of the state’s voting system, including when Trump pushed him on their phone call Saturday, according to an audio recording of the call obtained by CNN and first reported by The Washington Post. In excerpts of the stunning one-hour call, Trump lambasted his fellow Republican for refusing to falsely say that he had won the election in Georgia and repeatedly touted baseless claims of election fraud.

“The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump said in one part of the call. Raffensperger responded, “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

In another part, Trump said, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

Raffensperger appeared measured on Tuesday, not responding directly when asked whether he saw Trump’s assertion that ignoring his conspiracy theories was illegal as a threat and whether he thought Trump had broken the law during their call.

“We already have over 100 investigations going on about that election; President Trump has sued us in multiple jurisdictions,” Raffensperger responded. “In fact, one of those lawsuits was dismissed earlier today. And so we are standing on the truth. We know that we have followed the law, we have followed the Constitution and at the end of the day he will not prevail in a court of law.”

When pressed about Republicans in both chambers of Congress planning to contest the Electoral College results of the presidential election on Wednesday, Raffensperger said that “they’re going to do what they may want to do up in the Washington, DC, tomorrow but here in Georgia we reported the results.”

He also noted it was “a good point” that none of the House Republicans from Georgia who won in November and are objecting to Biden’s electoral votes are also objecting to their own victories, “because their election was run with the same system, the same processes, and they won their races.”

Republican Reps. Jody Hice and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia are among those who won in November and are challenging Biden’s Electoral College victory. GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her colleague David Perdue, who are both candidates in Tuesday’s Georgia runoffs, also support for the challenge. At least 140 House Republicans and about a dozen Senate Republicans are expected to object to the Electoral College results on Wednesday.

Raffensperger assured that Georgians should “absolutely” feel confident about the integrity of Tuesday’s Senate runoff elections.

“We have never had an election that has been more secure with more integrity, and I would encourage every Georgian, if you haven’t voted yet, put away all of this negative stuff that will keep you away from the polls and get out to vote,” he added.