January 4, 2021

A Fed-Up Georgia Official Systematically Destroyed Trump’s Taped Election Allegations, One by One

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One day after audio leaked of Donald Trump begging Georgia’s secretary of state to somehow “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results, a top Georgia election official systematically debunked each “easily, provably false” claim of voter fraud the outgoing president made.

Standing in front of a poster board titled “CLAIM VS FACT” in the Georgia State Capitol on Monday, voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterling explained that no dead people voted, no people under age 18 on Election Day voted, no stacks of ballots were scanned twice, and no voting machines erroneously flipped votes. In short, the Georgia ballots, which have been counted three times, definitively favor Joe Biden.

“We have seen nothing in our investigations of any of these data claims that shows there’s nearly enough ballots to change the outcome,” Sterling said.

In an hourlong call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday, Trump repeated his claims of election fraud, demanded that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes,” and insisted that it was impossible for him to have lost the state—all this after attempting to reach Raffensperger 18 different times. 

“This is all easily, provably false,” Sterling said of Trump’s fraud claims. “Yet the president persists, and by doing so undermines Georgians’ faith in the election system—especially Republican Georgians in this case—which is important because we have a big election coming up tomorrow, and everybody deserves to have their vote counted if they want it to be, Republican and Democrat alike.”

Watch Sterling’s exasperated explanation below:

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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