GOP Sues GA, Biden Win Certified, Lawsuit Tossed: Election News

GEORGIA — The votes cast by Georgians for president have been recounted twice and an audit of signatures on absentee ballots has been requested, but the battle over the state's 16 electoral vote continues. Sen. Lindsey Graham said the fracas has sparked a civil war in the party, while the state's Republican party is suing the secretary of state.

David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, said Tuesday that the GOP is doing everything possible to assure the integrity of the Jan. 5 U.S. Senate runoff elections, including suing Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican.

"We will never give the fight for election integrity," Shafer tweeted. "In the general election, @GaSecofState broke his promise to issue a bulletin allowing us to observe absentee ballot signature verification. After the election, he refused repeated calls by @BrianKempGA and others to audit the signature matches."

House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina bashed Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, also of South Carolina, on Tuesday and said the senator has "lost grip on reality." Graham told Fox News a "civil war is brewing in Georgia" over Biden's win.

"Get a grip. Get a grip. I think he's lost grip on reality. Yes, there's a civil war brewing, and it's just as idiosyncratic as the civil war we had before. And it just so happens to be brewing in the same part of the country that it broke out before. The result would be the same," Clyburn told CNN.

Texas Sues Georgia Over Election Outcome

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania claiming those states exploited the coronavirus pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws, skewing election results and leading to last month's victory for Biden.

Each of the states went to Biden, who collected 306 Electoral College votes in his victory over President Donald Trump. The Electoral College votes are to be officially cast Monday.

Election Results Recertified

Georgia recertified its presidential election results on Monday, again finding Joe Biden as the winner following three counts of ballots, Raffensperger said. That locks in the state's results for Biden before the Dec. 14 Electoral College vote.

“Today is an important day for election integrity in Georgia and across the country,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “The claims in the Kraken lawsuit prove to be as mythological as the creature for which they’re named. Georgians can now move forward knowing that their votes, and only their legal votes, were counted accurately, fairly, and reliably.”

The Secretary of State's office affirmed that all 159 counties have provided the total votes tabulated for presidential candidates and the statewide consolidated returns for the presidential election are a true and correct tabulation of the certified returns.

Raffensperger Debunks Vote Tampering Theory

Raffensperger said Monday there is no truth to social media claims that voting machines in Ware County were seized or tampered with.

“This is another of the falsehoods being pedaled by conspiracy advocates trying to convince the gullible of why the presidential election didn’t turnout as they’d hoped,” said Walter Jones, the office's communications manager for voter education and a conservative former journalist. “No voting machines have been seized. No one has unearthed evidence of ‘vote flipping’ because it didn’t happen. And no one has discovered some secret algorithm for altering the election outcome because that’s nonsense.”

A statewide hand recount resulted in a difference of 37 additional votes for the president in Ware County. That totals 0.26 percent, well below the average 1-2 percent variation demonstrated by academic research when comparing the accuracy of manual counts compared to machine counts because of normal human error, the office said.

Trump Lawsuit Thrown Out, Appeal Vowed

A federal judge in Atlanta threw out a lawsuit on Monday based on unproven claims of ballot-stuffing, electronic votes changing and other problems that challenged Biden's win in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

Claims made in the lawsuit filed by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell included voting machine tampering and other theories about how the president could have lost.

Attorneys for state election officials said there was no proof of election rigging.

Fox News reported Powell is filing an emergency appeal with the 11th Circuit after a federal judge in Georgia dismissed her challenge of the state's election results. Her actions come on the “safe harbor” day, the final day for election disputes to be resolved before Congress is bound to accept the results.