Examining the veracity of Trump’s letter to Georgia’s secretary of state

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By Tara Subramaniam

More than 10 months after the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump is still trying to claim victory in Georgia, a state that went back from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. Because he was only days away beat, Trump unleashes shattered Georgia election conspiracy theories, along with a well -known call today with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and staff.

Ahead of his scheduled rally in Georgia this weekend, Trump is once again attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 state election, though his previous efforts to do so are under criminal investigation.

In a letter sent to Raffensperger on Friday, Trump accused that “large-scale Voter Fraud continues to be reported in Georgia” and demanded that Raffensperger begin the process of decertifying the election, or whatever the legal right , and announce the real winner. “

As evidence of potential fraud, Trump’s letter cited an article from The Georgia Star News, a pro-Trump website whose reporting to CNN had previously checked the facts when the Trump campaign used it to support their fraud claims last year.

This time, in an article published Aug. 30, The Georgia Star News claimed that more than 43,000 uncounted voters in Georgia’s DeKalb County violated the state’s protection rule. Trump says those votes are invalid if the law is violated.

DeKalb County is a large, mostly Black and heavily democratic province that Biden won by nearly 250,000 votes in 2020. Biden’s margin of victory across Georgia is less than 12,000.

According to state election board rules regarding absentee voting, “ballots from the drop box are immediately delivered to the county registrar.” The Georgia Star News article stated that this policy was violated because, it claims, the ballot drop box transfer forms show some ballots retrieved from the drop box were recorded as received by the county registrar. the next day or with no time of receipt all recorded. CNN has not independently verified The Georgia Star News statements about the number of ballots that fit this description.

Fact First: Trump’s claims of fraud in Georgia remain completely unfounded. Even if the drop box process is violated, the Georgia Secretary of State said the ballots themselves will remain valid. Georgia confirmed its election results three times under Raffensperger’s leadership and found no voter fraud.

In her first public response to the letter, Raffensperger told CNN’s Erin Burnett Monday night that an investigation into the claims raised by Trump and The Georgia Star News is ongoing, but suggested that the outcome of the investigation is not will change the election results. or invalidate any ballots.

“The ballots themselves were approved and lawful ballots, but were the processes violated? That’s what we’re investigating now,” Raffensperger said.

Beyond this investigation, neither the state nor DeKalb County can do anything else.

“At this time, the DeKalb County Registration and Election Board has no legal authority under state law to pardon presidential election results certified in December of 2020 by Georgia’s Secretary of State,” Erik Burton , a spokesman for the DeKalb Voter Register and Elections, told CNN Monday. “Election contests for the 2020 presidential election must be filed in court within five days from the Secretary of State’s certification.”

According to David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a non-partisan non-profit, if Trump is serious about his allegation, he should take it to court, don’t ask Georgia election officials to make something out of range. of their abilities.

“If they think they have a claim, if they think it’s new information that can withstand a court’s review,” Becker said, “they should go ahead and file a claim. But the oppressive officers on election 10, 11 months after an election is literally meaningless. “

“All we have here is a missing candidate so disconnected from the fact that he was asking for extrajudicial decertification of an election almost a year ago,” Becker told CNN, adding, “that it’s even possible that be decertified, will not change the outcome of the election. “

-CNN-Wire ™ and © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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