Lindsey Graham: Toss Legally Cast Ballots In Georgia (UPDATED)

Looks like power remora and unprincipled hack Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry" Graham (R-SuCk) has been working hard trying to steal Georgia for his mentor:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who he said questioned the validity of legally cast absentee ballots, in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state. [snip]

In the interview, Raffensperger also said he spoke on Friday to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims about voting irregularities.

In their conversation, Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state’s signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said.

Raffensperger said he was stunned that Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Absent court intervention, Raffensperger doesn’t have the power to do what Graham suggested because counties administer elections in Georgia.

“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger said.

Twitter reacts so we don't have to:

 

Attn: AG Barr

Still searching for evidence of attempts to interfere with election? Appears that Senator Lindsey Graham should be investigated immediately. https://t.co/V1Q23G2NSY

— Kristen Clarke 866-OUR-VOTE (@KristenClarkeJD) November 16, 2020

 

Some might call this… election fraud. https://t.co/sB1r7QTzmv

— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) November 16, 2020

 

Lindsey Graham is now begging election officials to turn our country into a sham democracy resembling Russia's. And he's far from alone in the GOP https://t.co/zt6WKKgpZ2

— David Nir (@DavidNir) November 16, 2020

 

Indeed I am👇

"Marc Elias, a top attorney for the Democratic Party who has spent decades defending voting rights, is calling on the Ethics Committee to investigate Senator Lindsey Graham."https://t.co/fBYRfCFpxS

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) November 17, 2020

 

If Bill Barr were not the Attorney General, the report that Graham pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to discard legally cast votes would prompt an intensive investigation. Until we have a new Attorney General, the job of investigating falls to the Senate ethics committee.

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) November 17, 2020

 

This is what we in the legal world call a felony. https://t.co/GQry7GO2fl

— Andrew Weissmann (@AWeissmann_) November 16, 2020

 

Being a professional weasel, likely nothing of any significance will happen to Graham as a result of this -- except, perhaps, it backfiring on Georgia Republicans in the coming Senate runoffs.  It's a thin reed, but we'll hold on to it.

In the meantime, you can help Stacy Abrams make it a Fair Fight and flip those two Republican seats!

UPDATE: 

 

Two phone calls. Witnesses. https://t.co/mUyalCFGq1 pic.twitter.com/L77DXKpLCR

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 17, 2020

 

UPDATE II:

Sen. @LindseyGrahamSC just told a group of reporters in the capitol that he’s also spoken to Secretaries of State in Nevada and Arizona. This is in addition to the sos in Georgia.

He said he’s doing it as a senator who is worried about election integrity. (@pkcapitol asked)

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 17, 2020

 

 

The Intentional Georgia Voting Shambles

The state that brought us a rigged election controlled by a Trumper who just happened to be running in that same election is at it again:

Thousands of voters in Georgia participating in Tuesday’s primary elections have experienced major delays, with reports of long lines and defective voting machines across the state, including in Atlanta, the state’s majority-Black, most populous city.

Georgia is one of five states holding primary elections Tuesday, along with North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina and Nevada. States continue to hold in-person elections amid the coronavirus pandemic, even as voting rights activists and several Democrats in Congress push for more federal investment in mail-in voting.

Georgia is shaping up to be a battleground state, not just in the presidential election, but in the race for the two Senate seats currently held by Republicans.  The long lines at polling places, new machines that didn't work, and poorly trained poll workers seemed to mysteriously occur at predominantly black areas around Atlanta, Savannah and Columbus.

Meanwhile, Georgia's Republican crackers are tussling about the best way to suppress the vote, either through the methods employed above and/or denying absentee balloting in the midst of a pandemic:

Georgia, in particular, has been roiled by a fight over access to voting during the pandemic. In April, the state’s Republican House leader, David Ralston, publicly denounced the Republican secretary of state for sending absentee ballots to registered voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary, which was postponed from its original May 19 date due to the pandemic. Ralston claimed mail-in voting is ”devastating to Republicans.”

That's saying the quiet part out loud, not that they're hiding anything any more.

As Steve Benen points out,

... [T]his was a disaster that many saw coming: Georgia's 2018 elections were a mess, as then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R), administering his own gubernatorial election, kicked hundreds of thousands of voters off the ballot rolls, leading to widespread breakdowns and dysfunction.

In the cycle's wake, Kemp, in his capacity as governor, set out to replace all of the Georgia's voting machines, hiring an electronic-voting-machine company that hired Kemp's former campaign manager as a lobbyist. The company had never tackled a project of this scale, but it nevertheless tried to roll out the largest and fastest installation of elections equipment in American history.

And Georgia crackers aren't alone in attempting this heist:

... Georgia's Republican-led state government helped create the mess; Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court helped pave the way for the mess by gutting the Voting Rights Act; the U.S. Justice Department hasn't shown any interest in protecting the franchise since 2017; and Donald Trump's White House is actively involved in an aggressive campaign to make voting more difficult in the hopes that it will increase the odds of the president holding onto power.

The good news is that voters, for the most part, weren't buckling to these suppression tactics. Shining a light on the abuses now helps, but expecting Republicans to make it easier for people to vote just isn't in their DNA.  Organizations like Stacy Abrams' Fair Fight aims to counter Republican sabotage in Georgia and around the country, and they deserve our support.

Meanwhile, the Republican Georgia Secretary of State has begun an investigation of the foul- ups, which should be completed, if past is prologue, by =checks notes=  November 4.