11/16/20: Georgia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger, a Republican, unloaded in a Washington Post interview Monday.
____________________
“You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.”
Anonymous threat
____________________
With a hand recount of all votes in the state nearing completion, he said he was being pressured to find ways to exclude legal ballots. One of those pressuring him was Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Graham is not from Georgia. Graham would have no insight into how votes were cast in that state. Nor would Graham have legal standing to interfere. When reporters asked him about his call to Raffensperger, Graham played coy. Oh, no, they had a fine conversation – and if Raffensperger got the idea that Graham wanted him to find a way to make sure Trump won …well, Graham was shocked.
Raffensperger refers to himself as a Trump supporter, but told
the Post he and his wife had been receiving death threats. “You better
not botch this recount,” one caller warned. “Your life depends on it.”
 |
Floyd County - where the biggest mistake was found. |
Meanwhile, Trump
says the fix is in. Dominion Voting Systems, a Colorado-based manufacturer of
Georgia’s voting machines, is, he claims, a “leftist” company with ties to
Venezuela. Dominion, the president and his supporters say, left thousands of Trump
votes out of the count.
Raffensperger
noted Monday that several counties had completed hand recounts and tallies exactly
matched numbers reported by the machines. As the day progressed, we learned
that forty-two counties, with smaller populations had zero votes lost or
gained for either candidate in the recount. Another 35 showed gains for the
president of five votes or less. Peach County, for example, found six more
votes for Biden, but eleven more for Trump, a net gain of five, out of 12,422
cast.
Hardly
evidence of massive fraud.
In fact, 20
red counties, all uncovered minor counting errors in Biden’s favor: giving him
a net gain of 45 votes.
Washington,
a blue county, found six more votes, net, for Biden. Then you had several red
counties, finding net votes for Biden: +6, +6, +7,+7, +8. Then a blue county,
+10 for Biden. Calhoun, a blue county, netted Biden 16 votes. So did Coweta, a
deep red county, giving Biden 9 and taking 7 from Trump. Bartow County, another
red jurisdiction, took away 59 Trump votes, added seven for the challenger, and
netted Biden +66 votes. The biggest gains for Biden came in four blue counties:
DeKalb, where Biden picked up 560 votes out of a total of 366,509 cast – Cobb, where Biden
lost 30 votes in the recount, but Trump lost 345, for a net gain for Biden of 315
out of 387,305 – and Dougherty and Henry counties (+117 each).
There were two major developments when it turned out some
election official in Floyd County forgot to upload 2,600 votes from a memory
stick in the first tally. Those votes were uncovered during the hand recount. Floyd
is a red county, so Democrats were not to blame.
The president managed to gain 686 votes from just that single mistake,
the biggest change in any county in Georgia.
A second red county uncovered a second error – again thousands of votes not uploaded. Fayette County also
failed to record 2,755 votes from a memory stick that correctly tallied
the votes. But even when those votes were counted, Mr. Trump had a net gain of
only 26.
Then Douglas County (a blue country) found a smaller error, with
votes on a memory card from one precinct not uploaded (Biden 156, Trump 128).
Walton County (red) also found a memory card with 284 votes not
previously tallied. Trump netted another 86 votes.
The recount rolled on, with little net gain for either candidate.
Five blue counties, Fulton, Gwinnett, Rockdale, Clayton, and Bibb, with a total
of more than 1,152,000 votes, retallied their numbers. Trump gained,
respectively: 345, 285, 241, 145 and 88 votes.
Clarke, another blue county, netted the president +78 votes,
Newton +26, Macon +24, Muscogee +12, Terrill +10, and a few other blue counties
showed lesser gains.
Yet the following red counties made similar mistakes, all in
Trump’s favor. So, in the following counties, he had votes taken away: Walton –86, Thomas –84, Ware –74, Lowndes –70, Columbia –69, Forsyth
–65, Hall –46, Wayne –40, Appling –38, Screven –37, Grady –33, Glynn –25,
Whitfield –23, Brantley –19, Jackson –13, Wilkinson –11, Cherokee, Paulding and
Tattnell, –10 each.
So, when the smoke cleared, little had changed:
First
count Recount Gain
Joseph R. Biden Jr. 2,473,383 2,475,141 +1,758
Donald J. Trump 2,459,825 2,462,857 +3,032
Margin: 13,558 12,284
Trump wasn’t
happy with the recount. Monday, he tweeted angrily about signature-matching in
Georgia and criticized Raffensperger for his management of both the first election
and the hand tally. “Georgia Secretary of State, a so-called Republican (RINO),
won’t let the people checking the ballots see the signatures for fraud. Why?
Without this the whole process is very unfair and close to meaningless.
Everyone knows that we won the state.”
Um…not
everyone does.
*
Such a withdrawal will “delight” the Taliban
IN OTHER NEWS, after firing most of the top civilian leadership
at the Pentagon, Lame Duck Don is rushing to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops
from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia.
Even Senate Leader McConnell has a hard time with this decision,
saying such a withdrawal will “delight” the terrorists.
And while Trump was at it, he had another great idea! Having
learned that Iran now has 12 times more nuclear material than was allowed
under the old Iran deal (which Trump tore up and replaced with a stack of Mar-a-Lago
menus), Lame Duck thought it might be a great idea if he just went ahead and bombed the shit out of Iran’s main nuclear production
site.
Fortunately, even the sycophants who remain in this
dysfunctional administration balked at that one.
So, call it a good day for America.
(Also, Iran.)
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