![]() ![]() ![]() 6 in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. That belief led some of Trump’s most ardent supporters - including some from Georgia - to attack the U.S. The repetition of false claims convinced many Georgians they were true: By January, three-quarters of Republicans surveyed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution believed there was substantial fraud in the presidential election. In the months ahead, Trump and his supporters continued to repeat such allegations long after they had been investigated and refuted. That didn’t stop Republicans from repeating the Chatham County allegations at the Buckhead rally that night. On closer inspection, the allegations amounted to nothing. He found there was no evidence that election workers counted illegal votes or broke the law.īut the lawsuit established a pattern: Trump and his supporters made alarming accusations that created an impression of lawlessness. “What can be done with this evidence of FRAUD?” one replied.Īt a hearing the day of the Buckhead rally, Chatham election officials said the ballots in question had been flagged for further review, but they were found to be valid and then counted. Sounding the alarm on Twitter, Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer said he authorized the lawsuit to “prevent the unlawful counting of absentee ballots received after the election.” Some of his Twitter followers were understandably upset. They can’t catch us.”Ī few minutes ago in Chatham County, our observers watched an unidentifiable woman mix over 50 ballots into the stack of uncounted absentee ballots.- David Shafer November 4, 2020 “We’re up by 2.5%, or 117,000 votes, with only 7% left,” he said. He warned that his enemies were trying to steal the election, and he singled out Georgia as a state he had won. With millions of votes still uncounted and half a dozen swing states too close to call, he prematurely declared victory over Biden in remarks to supporters at the White House. Trump took his own victory lap shortly before 2:30 a.m. Sterling had no idea Georgia was about to become a focus of Trump’s unprecedented crusade to win reelection, regardless of the official results. “I mean, there were no lines, everybody had been voting, the results were coming in.” “We were in victory lap mode,” Sterling said. Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system manager, went to bed late that night believing the election had been a resounding success. At a few busy precincts, voters waited 30 to 40 minutes - far from the hourslong waits many saw in June. Wait times averaged less than two minutes at polling places across the state. The June primary election had been a fiasco, with long lines and problems operating Georgia’s new voting system.īut the November election was going well. The race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden was expected to be close, and election officials were under intense pressure to get it right. Georgia was a swing state in the highest-profile presidential election in recent memory. A big screen showed wait times across the state, with a few slow precincts flashing red. 3, 2020, huddled in their “war room,” watching for cybersecurity threats and monitoring returns. ![]()
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