The presidential election is over, and President-elect Joe Biden won. Outgoing President Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge these basic facts, however. On Saturday, as the date of Biden’s inauguration drew closer, Trump rushed to Twitter to suggest that there’s still a possibility of a Trump victory. This notion is pie-in-the-sky nonsense. Across weeks of court battles, Trump’s allies have not come remotely close to overturning the election outcome in a single state, and no real evidence of systematic fraud has emerged. On Saturday, Trump claimed that Georgia leaders were blocking a signature verification process for mail-in ballots from taking place, but that’s just not true.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted the following message:
‘I will easily & quickly win Georgia if Governor [Brian Kemp] or the Secretary of State permit a simple signature verification. Has not been done and will show large scale discrepancies. Why are these two “Republicans” saying no? If we win Georgia, everything else falls in place!’
I will easily & quickly win Georgia if Governor @BrianKempGA or the Secretary of State permit a simple signature verification. Has not been done and will show large scale discrepancies. Why are these two “Republicans” saying no? If we win Georgia, everything else falls in place!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2020
Trump insinuates that checking the signatures submitted with mail-in ballots would reveal enough fraud to hand him a victory in Georgia, where Biden scored a narrow win. There’s no legitimate evidence for this claim – and, critically, a signature verification process for mail-in ballots already took place across the state. The signature for every mail-in ballot was verified before tabulation. After that initial round of verification, envelopes (containing the signatures) and mail-in ballots are separated, making a meaningful signature re-check physically impossible. There’s no longer any apparent way to connect any of the ballots to any particular envelopes. Trump sounds – yet again – like he’s being purposefully dense.
Saturday isn’t the first time that Trump and his allies have targeted Georgia. Recently, allies including Rudy Giuliani attended a so-called hearing covering supposed fraud in the state, where someone presented video footage purportedly showing unsupervised ballot-counting in Fulton County, Georgia. In reality, the footage that they themselves presented shows an observer from the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on site. Gabriel Sterling, who manages voting system implementation in Georgia, recently publicly insisted that the conspiratorial rhetoric about election workers “has to stop” amidst a flurry of threats against top officials. Trump hasn’t tempered down his rhetoric.
On Saturday, in response to an article from The Washington Post about the subject, Trump also whined on Twitter about Republican members of Congress who acknowledge that Biden won the election.
25, wow! I am surprised there are so many. We have just begun to fight. Please send me a list of the 25 RINOS. I read the Fake News Washington Post as little as possible! https://t.co/cEBM0bYuQ9
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2020
