'Gold standard': Top GOP elections official rejects Trump’s voting claim

19 August

Georgia Attorney General Brad Raffensperger and his wife Tricia Raffensperger in November 2022 (Creative Commons)

During her Monday night, August 18 broadcast, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted that U.S. President Donald Trump sought Russian President Vladimir Putin's advice on running elections during their August 15 summit in Anchorage, Alaska. And one of the things Trump got out of the conversation, according to Maddow, was avoiding both mail-in voting and voting machines — two things that Trump railed against during his White House press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on August 18.

Maddow found it disturbing that Trump was getting input from an authoritarian on how to run U.S. elections, commenting, "It's an idea he says he got from his best friend." And Trump is now pushing the idea of an executive order banning mail-in voting nationwide.

But Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, is saying that mail-in ballots pose no threat from an election security standpoint and that he sees no problem in using them.

Raffensperger, along with conservative GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, butted heads with Trump after Joe Biden won Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the election was stolen from him in the Peach State, but Raffensperger and Kemp countered that the 2020 election was perfectly secure in their state and that Biden won Georgia fair and square.

In an August 18 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "Elections can never be honest with mail-in ballots/voting…and I and the Republican Party will fight like hell to bring honesty and integrity back to our elections. The mail-in ballot hoax, using voting machines that are a complete and total disaster, must end now."

But Raffensperger disagrees. WSB-TV Channel 2 in Atlanta quotes the Georgia secretary of state as saying, "Everything we worked on builds voter trust, and trust is the real gold standard."

Charlie Bailey, chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party, stated, "There is no power for a president to issue an executive order. These things are left to the states."

WSB reports, "Raffensperger said Georgia's elections, including mail-in ballots, are among the most secure in the country, with constant checks on voting machines to ensure integrity. Bailey expressed skepticism about the legal authority of the president to halt mail-in voting, noting that Republicans also use absentee ballots."

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