Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, has once again confirmed that Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 presidential race there.
Raffensperger said an audit of a recount of more than 15,000 absentee ballots in Atlanta’s suburban Cobb County found not a single fraudulent vote, reports Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB News), a PBS affiliate.
“The secretary of state’s office has always been focused on calling balls and strikes in elections and, in this case, three strikes against the voter fraud claims and they’re out,” said Raffensperger, who said the audit followed the hand recount as well as a machine recount requested by the Trump campaign.
“The Cobb County elections department had “a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures,” reports the Chicago Tribune, citing the audit report.
Here is that report, from Raffensperger and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Donald Trump, of course, isn’t having it.
In a Wednesday tweet, the president yet again declared himself the winner in Georgia and other swing states and called for Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, to resign, reports the Washington Post.
“He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG!” Trump wrote.
Trump also picked up on another wild conspiracy theory promoted on right-wing media, this one involving a non-existent person: Raffensperger’s supposed brother Ron.
“Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want ‘Trump’. So disgusting!” Trump tweeted.
CNN’s Jake Tapper notes that the lie remained available on Twitter overnight and well into Wednesday.
In fact, a Ron Raffensperger does work for the China’s multi-national tech giant Huawei, but he is not Brad Raffensperger’s brother, according to Newsweek and other sources.
Regarding Brad Raffensperger’s family connections, some social media sources claim he has no brother at all — but GPB News says it has confirmed “that Raffensperger does have four siblings, including a brother, but none of them are named Ron [and] none work for Chinese technology companies.”
“Trump’s continued conspiracy-mongering comes just days before Georgians return to the polls for a runoff election that will determine the balance of power in the Senate,” says The Week.
“The president and his supporters have tried to undermine confidence in Georgia’s election system, with some even encouraging Republicans not to vote in what they’re claiming is an insecure election.”