Georgia elections chief says special session to overturn election would be ‘nullifying the will of the people’

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said Sunday that calling a special legislative session to overturn the results of the presidential election would amount to “nullifying the will of the people.”

“At the end of the day, what they’re really trying to say is if they did, if — they would be then nullifying the will of the people. If you look at how the election turned out here in Georgia, President Trump got 10 percent less votes in Cherokee County, which is a rich red county in this election cycle. Whitfield County in northwest Georgia, less than 4.5 percent,” Raffensperger told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” 

“Yeah, sad but true … I’m a conservative Republican and I’m disappointed, but those are the results,” Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger tells @GStephanopoulos when asked if there’s no doubt in his mind that President Trump lost the state of Georgia. https://t.co/AYfzpfQ7lT pic.twitter.com/NsyWd0Cypp

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 6, 2020

“The people of Georgia spoke in this election, and, obviously, I’m a conservative Republican disappointed in the results,” Raffensperger also said. “But I said we’ll count every legal vote and work hard to make sure that no illegal votes were counted, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

He added, “I don’t believe that there’s the will in the General Assembly for a special session.”

Reports emerged Saturday that President Trump had called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and asked him to persuade state legislators to overturn the state’s election to favor the president. Kemp reportedly denied Trump’s requests.

On Sunday, Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) said he did not think the state legislature would convene for a special session to overturn the election.

“Calling the General Assembly back in at this point would almost be along the lines of a solution trying to find a problem. And we’re certainly not going to move the goal posts at this point in the election,” said Duncan on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Raffensperger said his office has so far discovered no cases of systemic fraud and no cases large enough to change the results of the election. There are currently more than 250 cases his office is investigating, Raffensperger said, and he has requested additional help from Kemp and resources from the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.

Stephanopoulos also brought up the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff elections between Republican incumbents Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue and their Democratic challengers, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. He noted that both Loeffler and Perdue have called for Raffensperger to be removed from office and asked if the secretary of state still supported the two GOP candidates.

“Absolutely,” Raffensperger replied. “I’m a Republican. I vote for Republicans. So I wish them well. The job of the Republican Party is to raise money and turn out the vote. My job as secretary of state is make sure we have honest and fair elections. It’s as simple as that, and I think in my office, integrity matters.”

“We’ve never found systemic fraud, not enough to overturn the election,” Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger tells @GStephanopoulos when asked about the findings of election investigations in his state amid false claims by President Trump. https://t.co/OhIlN9OkH0 pic.twitter.com/2zKmqtTGu6

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 6, 2020

Since Joe Biden was projected to win Georgia, flipping the historically red state, Raffensperger has faced harsh attacks from people upset about the recount, including members of his party. On social media, Trump has repeatedly accused Raffensperger of failing to deliver a fair and honest election, accusations Raffensperger has vehemently denied.