Georgia elections chief says misleading fraud claims amount to ‘emotional abuse’ of voters

Georgia's Republican election chief has said that making repeated and unfounded claims of fraud amounts to "emotional abuse" of voters, and that those pushing such allegations "should be ashamed".

Having repeatedly clashed with Donald Trump over his refusal to concede the election and unsubstantiated claims about widespread “irregularities”, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger warned politicians not to wind up voters who are already upset at losing the election.

“There’s just people who are really angry and they’re being spun up… It’s really the spinners that should be ashamed for playing with people’s emotions," Mr Raffensperger told The Hill.

"Politicians of both sides should never play with people’s emotions. It’s one thing to motivate people, I get that.  

“But to spin people up and play with their emotions, it’s emotional abuse and they ought to grow up and start acting with integrity,” said Mr Raffensperger.

Mr Raffensperger has been under fire from Senator David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans, who have accused him or not doing enough to address corruption in the election and demanded his resignation. Both face re-election in January 2021 – a contest critical for Democrats’ bid to seek a majority in the Senate.  

The Georgia official has been the target for criticism from the president himself as well, with Mr Trump describing him as a “Republican in name only".  

Mr Raffensperger said he doesn’t “like the idea that President Trump is not going to win,” but “I want every voter to know we’re going to do our job and make sure every legal vote is counted.”

Georgia is heading for a Democrat victory for the first time in 28 years, with Joe Biden leading Mr Trump by over 14,000 votes and already projected to be the winner of the state’s 16 electoral college votes by almost all major news networks.  

Along with Georgia, the 20 votes of Pennsylvania are important for the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, even as all major networks have called the race in Mr Biden’s favour.

Georgia is conducting a by-hand count of all the roughly five million votes cast in the state, an automatic process due to the narrow margin between the two candidates. The process has shown some isolated cases of discrepancies or human errors which have increased votes in favour of Mr Trump, but it’s still not seen as being enough to change the final outcome in the state.

For instance, in Fayette County, data from a memory card which was previously not uploaded added 2,755 votes in which the incumbent gained more than 400 votes on Mr Biden. Similarly, in Floyd County, the hand count uncovered 2,500 ballots that favour Mr Trump by 2 to 1, adding about 800 more votes to his tally than that of his Democrat rival.

“That’s a good thing… People don’t need to get upset about that. That’s why we did the audit,” said Mr Raffensperger on such errors being uncovered.