Georgia’s secretary of state on state on upcoming presidential election

(CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the upcoming presidential election.

When asked about Senator Raphael Warnock's comments about a "failed state election board attempt to change election rules as sort of proof" of voter suppression in Georgia, Raffensperger said:

"It's actually very sad to hear what he said, but he's been handpicked by Stacey Abrams when he ran several years ago, and she is actually the founder of the election denial movement. She lost back in 2018 by 55,000 votes, and then when we passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021 she said it was Jim Crow 2.0. But what you've seen in 2022 election and this election is record turnout. We now have photo ID for all forms of voting. People were concerned about signature match. We'd actually been sued by the Democrat Party and the Republican Party questioning you know, the validity of signature match. So we added that, layered that on top, you know, of we added photo idea on top of signature match, so that people know we were identifying who those voters are. And then you look at the turnout, we're almost pushing 1.4 million who've already voted early or who we've accepted their absentee ballots. We're probably gonna see a record turnout, early voting, probably 65 maybe 70% of all Georgians are going to vote that way, but they have a free will choice on how to vote. As it relates to the state election board rules. I never supported any of those I was very vocal about on day one, and they were ruled unconstitutional. They were shut down. But both Republican counties, two Republican controlled boards and two election boards actually joined those suits and fought against those state election board. So it's actually very easy to vote. We have photo ID, we verify citizenship, and we have record turnout."

Talks then came to Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's claims of fraud being underway in Whitfield County, saying Dominion voting machines were flipping votes, but the county's board said there was one case of a printed ballot not reflecting a voter's selection and that one of Raffensperger's colleagues saying it was a "human user error."

When asked if he had seen any evidence of fraud, Raffensperger answered:

"No. And what happened with Whitfield County was the lady thought she had pressed a certain, you know, selection, and then when she printed out the ballot, she noted that, she saw that, and so then she made them aware of it, and it got corrected. And then it got blown out of proportion by people that like to use, you know, Twitter and other forms of social media. But we're going to respond quickly to these sorts of things in 2024 because it's not supported by the facts. The equipment's working. We've done all sorts of audits, you know, since the last election, and coming up to this election."

During the interview, Brennan and Raffensperger talked about former President Donald Trump's comments about him and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp "doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win," which Brennan said that sounded "like an attempt to influence election officials."

When asked if Trump's comments crossed a line, Raffensperger said:

"It doesn't influence me, because everything we've done, from House Bill 316, back in 2019. SB, 202, and 2021, and SB 189...everything we've done is to shore up voters concerned, shore up security, but also we are making sure that the lines that you know Senator Warnock just mentioned, there's state law now lines have to be shorter than one hour on election day, and we track it. And the average wait time in 2022 was actually three minutes, and sometimes got down to two minutes. And even during this early voting period, lines we've been seeing reported at early vote centers, but lines have been less than an hour. But you also get checked in with the electronic poll pads in less than two minutes. I got checked in this past week with my wife. We got checked in less than 47 seconds. I timed it. Pretty amazing."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Raffensperger, click here.