ATLANTA – President Trump taken to Twitter Friday night to make the unfounded claim that Georgia’s two Senate contests are “illegal and invalid”, an argument that could hamper its efforts to persuade its supporters to convince Republican candidates in the two races that will determine which party Senate control.
The president will hold a rally in Dalton, GA on Monday, the day before election day, and Republicans in Georgia hope to focus his comments on how important it is for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David. . Perdue, the state’s two sitting Republican senators.
But Mr. Trump continued to make the false claim that Georgia’s electoral system was directed against him during the November 3 general election. Some Republican leaders fear that his supporters will take the president’s argument seriously, and decide to vote in a “corrupt” system is not worth it, a development that could hand the election over to the Democrats.
Some strategists and political scientists in the state have said that Mr. Trump’s assault on Georgia’s voting system may be responsible, at least in part, for the relatively light Republican rise in the conservative strongholds of northern Georgia, where Dalton is, in the early voting period that ended. Thursday.
More than 3 million Georgia voters took part in the early voting period, which began on December 14. A strong rise in early voting in strong Democratic areas and among African-American voters suggests that Republicans must have a strong election day to retain their Senate. seats.
Mr. Trump made his allegation about the Senate contests in a Twitter thread in which he also made the unfounded allegation that ‘massive corruption’ took place during the general election, ‘which gives us far more votes than it takes to win all the Swing . State. ”
The president specifically referred to a consent decision of Georgia which he said was unconstitutional. The problems with this document, he further argued, invalidate the two Senate contests and the results of his own election loss.
Mr. Trump almost certainly referred to a March decision agreed between the Democratic Party and Republican state officials that helped set standards for assessing the validity of signatures on absentee ballots in the state.
Mr. Trump’s allies have unsuccessfully argued in failed lawsuits that the consent decision was illegal because the U.S. Constitution gives the power to regulate congressional elections to government legislators. But the National Constitution Center, among others, notes that rulings in the Supreme Court allow lawmakers to delegate their authority to other civil servants.
Since Trump in November the election for Joseph R. Biden jr. Lost, the mr. Trump has consistently targeted Georgia’s Republican leaders – including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – saying they did not take his voter claims seriously enough. fraud. He told Mr. Kemp called “a fool” and asked him to resign. During a rally for me. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue last month in Georgia, the president spent a lot of time airing his own grievances, while spending less time supporting the two Republican candidates.