Georgia was set to certify its results on Friday, with President-elect Joe Biden winning the state by a thin margin — but outgoing President Donald Trump doesn’t exactly sound impressed with the process, to put it lightly. He continues to spread outright lies about the electoral process, including in the state of Georgia. On Twitter this Friday, Trump claimed that top Georgia officials — who, mind you, are Republicans — “refuse to let us look at signatures which would expose hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots,” but this claim is a lie, plain and simple. Trump’s not possibly onto something — he’s lying.
Trump posted the following angry message:
‘The Governor of Georgia, and Secretary of State, refuse to let us look at signatures which would expose hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots, and give the Republican Party and me, David Perdue, and perhaps Kelly Loeffler, a BIG VICTORY. Why won’t they do it, and why are they so fast to certify a meaningless tally?’
Again — Trump is lying. Top Republican officials in Georgia are not “refusing” to let the Trump campaign “look at signatures.” During the initial tabulation process, signatures for all mail-in ballots were verified — and then, ballots and the envelopes that they arrived in (which contained the voters’ signatures) were separated. Thus, during the state’s recently concluded recount, election workers didn’t re-check signatures — and that’s because there was no way that they could meaningfully do so! There’s no dubious conspiracy here; there’s simply the fact that Trump can’t speak a process into existence that’s physically impossible to perform under current circumstances. Ballots and envelopes were separated.
Also, more broadly: there is zero evidence for the president’s claim that hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots were included with tallies in Georgia. To take Trump’s claims at face value, one might have to believe that the following list of interests were all in cahoots to commit fraud: local canvassing boards, state canvassing boards, supervisor of elections offices, Secretary of State offices, frontline election workers, and more. There’s no meaningful reason to take the president’s nonsensical conspiracies seriously. The evidence just is not there.
Check out Twitter’s response below:
