GA Secretary of State Says Lindsey Graham Pressured Him to Throw Out Legal Votes and Graham Just Responded

President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, earning 306 electoral votes—well over the 270 vote threshold needed to take the White House.

The President is refusing to acknowledge these results, instead launching multiple lawsuits in an all but futile attempt to overturn the outcome. Exacerbating this is Trump's Twitter account, where he's deployed a near-constant stream of lies and misinformation alleging with no evidence that widespread voter fraud tipped the race to Biden.

In one of the most unexpected outcomes, Biden narrowly won the state of Georgia—which had been reliably red since 1992—by around 14,000 votes.

The state is currently auditing its votes before certification, part of which requires signature verification of ballots sent by mail.

Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—a Republican—has pushed back against claims of voter fraud from Trump's allies, and in an interview with the Washington Post, Raffensperger relayed that Trump loyalist Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pressured him to throw out legally cast votes through the signature verification process.

According to the Post:

"Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state's signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said."

Graham has denied the accusation, claiming that he was simply concerned with potential faults in Georgia's signature matching process and wondering if there was bipartisan oversight of the signature matching process.

Graham said:

"I think that's just ridiculous. If he feels threatened by that conversation, he's got a problem. I actually thought it was a good conversation."

Raffensperger said of Graham's denial:

"It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road ... The implication is 'Look hard and see how many ballots you can throw.'"

People are disgusted at Graham's purported attempt to subvert legal ballots, and they want him to answer for it.

They were concerned that Graham was committing the same fraud Republicans railed about for months.

Georgia's audit is far from expected to change the outcome in the state.