Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday that the Republican US senators who called for his resignation over election mismanagement – Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue – haven’t provided any evidence to back their claims.
“They haven’t provided me anything,” Raffensperger told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.”
Loeffler and Perdue released a joint statement on Monday calling on Raffensperger to step down and bemoaning the state’s election process without any specific allegations.
“Georgians are outraged, and rightly so. We have been clear from the beginning: every legal vote cast should be counted. Any illegal vote must not. And there must be transparency and uniformity in the counting process,” the pair’s statement read, echoing President Donald Trump’s false claims that illegal ballots are shaping the election.
Raffensperger, they maintained, “has failed the people of Georgia, and he should step down immediately.”
But Raffensperger quickly rebuked their message on Monday in a statement that made clear “that is not going to happen.”
“The voters of Georgia hired me, and the voters will be the one to fire me,” he said.
He expanded on that point Wednesday, stating plainly that no one has told him what he’s being accused of or why he would resign. “Obviously, this is a very close race and people that were on one side of the aisle don’t like the results. I get that. I’m a Republican,” Raffensperger said.
“But the results will be the results.”
CNN projected last week that a special election race between Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock will advance to a runoff in January. And while CNN has not projected that the Senate race between Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff will advance to a runoff, both candidates are already campaigning to face each other on January 5.
Perdue is leading Ossoff by more than 86,000 votes, but has not received the more than 50% of votes needed to prevent a runoff.
Outside of the GOP, Loeffler and Purdue’s call for Raffensperger’s resignation have been widely dismissed.
In an especially sharp admonishment Tuesday, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called their statement “the kind of thing you hear about in banana republics” during a speech on the Senate floor.
“Surely you must think that those senators have incredible, substantial and weighty proof of such a scandalous and alarming allegation, but you would be wrong,” Schumer said. “Those two senators provided no evidence, not even a shred to back up their claims.”
