In the wake of the apparent defeats of both Republican incumbents in Georgia’s two U.S. Senate races, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to — predictably — claim that the process was rigged. Early Wednesday, on the day after Election Day, Trump ranted that authorities “just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night,” adding an insistence that the country’s “Election Process is worse than that of third world countries!” In fact, results out of Georgia changed as workers and authorities tabulated ballots, and this concept isn’t complicated. Counting takes time. On Wednesday, Georgia voting systems implementation manager Gabriel Sterling publicly fact-checked the president — again.
Sterling tweeted the following:
‘No Mr. President, there weren’t “found” ballots. We have known the number of advanced votes since this weekend. We saw record Election Day turnout. As of Monday 970,000 absentees had been accepted. 31k more were added in yesterday’s totals. That leaves 60k that came in yesterday.’
No Mr. President, there weren’t “found” ballots. We have known the number of advanced votes since this weekend. We saw record Election Day turnout. As of Monday 970,000 absentees had been accepted. 31k more were added in yesterday’s totals. That leaves 60k that came in yesterday. https://t.co/vMVMEooZUQ
— Gabriel Sterling (@GabrielSterling) January 6, 2021
Sterling appears to be indicating that, throughout the day on Election Day itself, about 60 thousand absentee ballots came in, accounting for the ballots to which Trump may be referring. Before Election Day, authorities apparently received about 970 thousand absentee ballots from voters across Georgia with an additional cache of about 31 thousand coming in shortly before Election Day, Sterling seemingly indicates. Georgia accepted absentee ballots until polls closed on Election Day.
In his original Twitter message on the subject, Trump ranted, in full, as follows:
‘They just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night. The USA is embarrassed by fools. Our Election Process is worse than that of third world countries!’
They just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night. The USA is embarrassed by fools. Our Election Process is worse than that of third world countries!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2021
Trump has raised very similar claims about the ballot tabulation process following the November election. He has insisted that post-election shifts in reported results automatically warrant suspicion on account of their timing, as if election workers and authorities made late adjustments to the tallies on behalf of their supported candidates. In reality, counting takes time. This concept isn’t complicated! In Georgia, authorities were not even permitted to begin actually counting absentee ballots until after polls closed on Election Day, although authorities were permitted to process ballots — meaning check accompanying signatures and otherwise prepare the votes for counting — before that point.
