Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has been receiving death threats from supporters of President Donald Trump who are demanding he overturns the election results in Georgia during the recount, the Washington Post reported Monday.
“You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it,” a text sent to Raffensperger
Raffensperger said he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans and he singled out Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) as the main force behind the pressure to toss legally cast ballots in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state.
On the same day that Graham asked Raffensperger about throwing out mail ballots, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Georgia challenging the way county election officials check signatures and allow voters a chance to fix ballots with errors.
Raffensperger expressed exasperation over a string of baseless allegations coming from Trump and his allies about the integrity of the Georgia results, including claims that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia’s voting machines, is a “leftist” company with ties to Venezuela that engineered thousands of Trump votes not to be counted.
The atmosphere has grown so contentious, Raffensperger said, that both he and his wife, Tricia, have received death threats in recent days, including a text to him that read: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.”
“Other than getting you angry, it’s also very disillusioning,” Raffensperger said of the threats, “particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle. Everyone that is working on this needs to elevate their speech. We need to be thoughtful and careful about what we say.” He said he reported the threats to state authorities.
The pressure on Raffensperger, who has bucked his party in defending the state’s voting process, comes as Georgia is in the midst of a laborious hand recount of about 5 million ballots. President-elect Joe Biden has a 14,000-vote lead in the initial count.
