President Trump said the two U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia, which are only four days away, are “illegal and invalid.”
The flurry of tweets he sent on Friday, New Year’s Day, adds more controversy surrounding the efforts by incumbent Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue to get reelected and help Republicans retain control of the upper chamber.
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Trump suggested that changes made to the voting process in multiple states, including Georgia, invalidated those contests. This is coupled with the claims of voter fraud in the election that Trump and his allies have cited to protest President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, although federal and state officials say there is no evidence showing widespread fraud.
“Before even discussing the massive corruption which took place in the 2020 Election, which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States (only need three), it must be noted that the State Legislatures were not in any way responsible for the massive … changes made to the voting process, rules and regulations, many made hastily before the election, and therefore the whole State Election is not legal or Constitutional,” Trump said. “Additionally, the Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election … is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections. In Wisconsin, Voters not asking for applications invalidates the Election. All of this without even discussing the millions of fraudulent votes that were cast or altered!”
Twitter placed warnings on Trump’s tweets, saying, “Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election,” and “this claim about election fraud is disputed.”
The Georgia consent degree alluded to by Trump was a March legal settlement on spelling out standards for how signature matching is performed that came out of a Georgia Democratic Party lawsuit that argued minorities were being disproportionately affected by rejected absentee ballots. Trump previously claimed the consent decree “makes it impossible to check & match signatures on ballots and envelopes, etc. They knew they were going to cheat. Must expose real signatures!”
Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia secretary of state’s voting systems implementation manager, responded by saying Trump’s understanding of the consent decree was “flat out, 100 percent, four square wrong.” Lin Wood, an attorney assisting Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election, filed a lawsuit that claimed, in part, the consent decree was unconstitutional. But that lawsuit, which sought to halt the Georgia runoff elections, was dismissed in federal court last week.
Early voting in the Georgia runoff elections ended with more than 3 million votes, a record that reportedly has Republicans nervous. Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are the Democratic challengers taking on Loeffler and Perdue, respectively.
Democrats need to win both seats to make a 50-50 tie, made possible by two independents who caucus with the Democratic Party, which would give them control of the upper chamber. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would act as the tiebreaker in any party-line vote.
Trump is set to hold a rally in Dalton, Georgia, on the evening of Jan. 4, one day before the runoff elections.
