A day before two Senate runoff races in Georgia and a day after leaked audio showed President Donald Trump pressured Georgia's Sec. of State to "find" votes for him and overturn the results of the presidential election in the state, election officials in Georgia held a press conference to assure confidence in the state's voting systems.
Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official in the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urged Georgians to hit the polls Tuesday in crucial runoff elections despite Trump casting doubt on election integrity in the state.
"Given the nature of the President's statements and people with aligned with him...we are specifically asking you and telling you, please turn out and vote tomorrow," Sterling said.
Sterling added that even those who have been disillusioned by unproven claims of voter fraud will still benefit by casting a ballot.
"If you believe in your heart of hearts that there was (massive voter fraud), the best thing for you to do is to turn out and vote and make it harder for them to steal," he said. "...their votes count. Every person, every voice matters."
Sterling added that the numerous fraud claims shared by Trump in his conversation with Raffensperger remain unverified.
"There are people in positions of authority and respect who have said that their votes did not count, and it's not true," Sterling said.
He then went through several of Trump's claims of voter fraud, point-by-point, and debunked them.
Watch Sterling counter Trump's claims below. The clip begins around the 29th minute.
Sterling's press conference came a day after audio of Raffensperger's call with President Donald Trump was published by the Washington Post.
During that call, which reportedly took place on Saturday afternoon, the president repeatedly pressured Raffensperger to “find” nearly 12,000 votes for him in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.
During the call, Trump continuously asked Raffensperger to declare him the winner of the 2020 election, citing several unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. Lawyers representing Raffensperger’s office that were also on the call repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s claims of fraud.
"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said during the call."…The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you've recalculated."
On Sunday morning, Trump tweeted that he felt Raffensperger was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions” about voter fraud in his state. Shortly after, Raffensperger tweeted that what Trump had said was “not true” and that the “truth will come out.” The audio of the call was released shortly thereafter.
Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out https://t.co/ViYjTSeRcC
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) January 3, 2021
The audio of the call has prompted Democratic lawmakers to file a criminal referral to the FBI. In a letter, Reps. Ted Lieu, D-California and Kathleen Rice, D-New York, “engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes.”
Georgia has already certified the results of the election in the state. The state counted votes three times — once during the initial count, a second time during a full election audit that was conducted at Raffensperger’s request and a third time via a machine recount requested by the Trump campaign. All three counts showed Biden prevailed with a narrow win.
