‘Rigged Election’ Claims Raise Concerns From Georgia GOP

The Georgia U.S. Senate runoff elections will decide control of the United States Senate of the 117th Congress. Currently, the GOP sits at 50 seats in the Senate, while the Democrats are at 48. To win a majority, Democrats must win both seats in the upcoming runoff elections. It isn’t a stretch to say that this runoff will be a very, very important election. Yet, President Trump’s comments about the 2020 election being “rigged” is causing concern for many Republicans, especially the Georgia GOP.

Despite losing almost 40 election-related lawsuits, President Trump has not given up on the rhetoric that this election was “rigged” and a “total scam.” He just lost a major lawsuit in Pennsylvania, where three Republican-appointed judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third District rejected the Trump campaign’s lawsuits, calling Trump’s claims of voter fraud having “no merit” and that is was “unprecedented” for a campaign to ignore the certification of votes by a state.

Even though Trump has said that he would leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for President-Elect Joe Biden in December, he continues to claim on Twitter that the election was fraudulent, illegal, and rigged, despite not being able to produce evidence of vote-rigging or illegal voting.

Just saw the vote tabulations. There is NO WAY Biden got 80,000,000 votes!!! This was a 100% RIGGED ELECTION.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2020

This is despite every news organization calling the race for Joe Biden and enough undisputed states (like in California or Massachusetts) or already-certified states (like Georgia and Pennsylvania) giving Joe Biden 270 electoral votes. Joe Biden has received over 80 million votes—a first in U.S. history—and currently leads by over six million votes, a lead which continues to expand as heavily Democratic states such as New York count up more votes. In addition, his very own administration has already begun the transition process.

President-elect Biden has become the first Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years to win Georgia. This has made Democrats very hopeful with their party’s prospects in the upcoming Senate runoff elections to be held on January 5, which, as mentioned above, will determine control of the Senate.

Even with the Republicans facing dire prospects in Georgia, the president hasn’t let up on his aforementioned claims about election fraud. He called Georgia’s (Republican) Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “an enemy of the people,” claimed further that he was “robbed” of an election and said that there was “fraud all over the place.”

After numerous news organizations (including the far-right Newsmax) have reported that Trump supporters are considering boycotting the Georgia runoff elections, he immediately encouraged people to vote for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the runoff.

Calls from the MAGA crowd to boycott the election has left Republican officials and donors very worried. A GOP donor, Dan Eberhart, has called on Republican leaders to challenge Trump’s claims about election fraud before it does irreparable harm to the party. Though a small amount of GOP senators, like Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Pat Toomey (Pa.) among others have denounced these claims, top-level Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have not came out against such claims yet.

It is evident that Trump’s claims about election fraud are hurting party prospects. It is paramount to the integrity of the election and American democracy that these claims are rebuked. It is way past time for GOP leaders to come out against Trump. For the sake of democracy, such claims should be fiercely denounced and ignored.

Check out the 2020 election coverage page for more.