Georgia secretary of state: My family voted for Trump. He threw us under the bus anyway.
The previous few weeks have been troublesome for the voters of the Peach State.
As the nation and the world watched, Georgia took heart stage in a battle that can outline our nation in a really sensible sense for the subsequent 4 years. But additionally, in a bigger sense, how this nation will transfer ahead into the future.
Like Americans in each different state, Georgians went to the poll field on and in the weeks main as much as Nov. 3; to solid their vote for president, for senator, or perhaps simply the native city council.
A file 1.3 million voters cast ballots absentee by mail right here. Another 2.7 million solid ballots in-person throughout Georgia’s gold-standard three weeks of early voting. Around 1 million waited on strains averaging a miniscule 3 minutes on Election Day.
By all accounts, Georgia had a wildly profitable and clean election. We lastly defeated voting strains and put behind us Fulton County’s now infamous popularity for disastrous elections. This needs to be one thing for Georgians to have a good time, whether or not their favored presidential candidate received or misplaced. For these questioning, mine misplaced — my family voted for him, donated to him and are actually being thrown under the bus by him.
Elections are American — not partisan
Elections are the bedrock of our democracy. They should be run pretty and, maybe extra vital, impartially. That’s not partisan. That’s simply American. Yet some don’t appear to see it that means.
When I took workplace, I dedicated to operating elections in Georgia with integrity. After any election, half of the voters might be glad and the different half might be disenchanted. But I wished to verify everybody felt assured in the course of and assured in the consequence.
And as Nov. 3 got here to a detailed, Georgia’s voters had each motive to be. Again, brief strains on Election Day. Record turnout. Record early voting and file absentee by mail voting.
In the days that adopted, a shedding presidential marketing campaign refused to just accept the info, following a playbook written by a failed gubernatorial candidate two years earlier than. A failed senate candidate with nothing to do tried to undermine the integrity of Georgia’s elections. A self-described “attorney for the damned” took up the trigger. An onslaught of pretend information and unrepentant disinformation threatened to tear the material of our nation aside. People on each side of the aisle generated controversies out of nowhere to fire up hassle.
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Even as Georgia launched into its first statewide audit, a course of that was solely doable as a result of of the state’s new printed paper-ballot system, those that requested the full hand recount triggered by the audit of such a detailed race lined as much as undermine its credibility. Those who had so lengthy been beneficiaries of the electoral course of sought to tear it aside at its very foundations.
But nonetheless, integrity issues.
Leaders of integrity
When the nation is caught in turmoil, because it has been by way of a number of presidential phrases, the folks of Georgia and their fellow Americans will look to leaders with integrity for steering.
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Throughout my two years as secretary of state, I’ve fought repeatedly to uphold the integrity of elections in Georgia. We labored with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to strengthen signature matching for absentee poll voters. We outlawed ballot harvesting and carried out a brand new voting system with printed paper-ballots that voters may maintain and overview earlier than casting for the first time in nearly 20 years. We fought frivolous lawsuits from fringe teams and a failed gubernatorial candidate in search of to undermine legal guidelines passed by state legislators who have been really elected by the voters.
In occasions of uncertainty, when the integrity of our political system is most in danger, the integrity of our flesh pressers is paramount.
Many of my fellow Republicans are women and men of integrity. They show it every day: preventing for their constituents, preventing for liberty, and preventing for truthful and dependable elections.
In occasions like these, we want leaders of integrity to information us by way of.
Brad Raffensperger is the secretary of state of Georgia.
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This article initially appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger: Elections call for integrity
