Georgia's top election official said Sunday the state legislature is unlikely to hold a special session over election results and that investigators "never found systemic fraud," despite President Donald Trump's continued unfounded claims otherwise.
In an interview with ABC News' This Week, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said state officials "don't see anything that would overturn the will of the people," who voted in favor of President-elect Joe Biden last month. Recently, the president called Raffensperger an "enemy of the people." The Georgia secretary of state said Trump's voter fraud claims are promoting "disunity" among Republicans, and the president's supporters must cease their "irrational, angry behavior" toward poll workers who simply counted the votes.
"We've had death threats, my wife's had sexualized texts and things like that, and now they've actually gone after and had people who've have been following young poll workers and election workers in Gwinnett County and also folks in one of our offices," Raffensperger said. "You're seeing irrational, angry behavior, it's unpatriotic. People shouldn't be doing that. We had an election, like I said, I wish my guy would have won and it looks like he's not and it looks like he doesn't have enough votes to prevail."
As President Trump attacks Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, he tells @GStephanopoulos that his family has received death threats and some poll workers are being targeted: "You're seeing just irrational angry behavior. It's unpatriotic." https://t.co/jPVBc3tTOH pic.twitter.com/mjwIKCNcCt
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 6, 2020
Raffensperger said one reason why many Republicans are refusing to accept Biden's victory over Trump is because they live in a GOP echo chamber. "If you're in an 80 percent Trump county, you just don't understand. And there are other counties that feel the exact opposite."
Trump held his first post-election rally Saturday in Valdosta, Georgia, in support of GOP Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, where he also railed against state election officials like Raffensperger for allowing widespread election fraud—something the secretary of state said investigators "never found." Trump on Saturday demanded the Georgia legislative assembly hold a special session over the election results, but Governor Brian Kemp has rejected any such request.
"The people of Georgia spoke in this election and obviously I'm a conservative Republican and I'm disappointed in the results. But I said we'll count every legal vote and work hard to make sure that no illegal votes have been counted and that's what we've been doing. I don't believe that there's the will in the General Assembly for a special session," Raffensperger said Sunday.
The Georgia secretary of state told This Week host George Stephanopoulos he still supports both incumbent Republican Senators Perdue and Loeffler, despite the two having called for him to be removed from office.
"Absolutely, I'm a Republican," he said. "I vote for Republicans. So I wish them well. The job of the Republican Party is to raise money and to turn out the vote. My job as secretary of state is to have honest and fair elections, it's as simple as that and in my office I think integrity matters."
He told angry supporters of the president that if they want to blame someone for Trump's loss in Georgia, then they should point toward the state's GOP leaders. Raffensperger said he and other election officials simply counted every legal vote and only found around 250 cases of potential voter fraud.
"The state party didn't do their job, didn't raise enough money, and didn't turn out enough people," Raffensperger said. "We've never found systemic fraud, not enough to overturn the election. We don't see anything which would overturn the will of the people here in Georgia."
Raffensperger noted Trump even lost to Biden in wealthy Republican counties that could have potentially put him over the top—if state party leaders had done their jobs effectively.
"If you look at how the election turned out here in Georgia, President Trump got 10 percent less votes in say, Cherokee County, which is a rich, red county this election cycle. Whitfield County in northwest Georgia—less than four-and-a-half percent. And so really at the end of the day, the voice of the people were spoken and I'm disappointed as a conservative Republican also," he said.
Newsweek reached out to the Georgia secretary of state's office as well as the Trump campaign for additional remarks Sunday morning.
