Georgia judge approves ballot audit as Trump supporters continue to push unfounded election claims

Judge permits recount in county with no evidence of absentee ballot fraud, fuelling former president’s claims

A judge in Georgia has approved a recount in Fulton County as part of a concerted effort by supporters of Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election results.

Brian Amero, a judge serving on Henry County Superior Court allowed the recount to go ahead on Friday.

Around 147,000 votes will be recounted, a move initiated by a group of activists who will be paying for the audit to go ahead, and more information about it come imminently, Judge Amero said.

Fulton County Commissioner Chairman Rob Potts condemned the move, calling it “outrageous”and claimed it did nothing but support the lie peddled by the Trump campaign, which led to the attempted coup on the deadly Capitol on 6 January.

Supporters of the move to begin a recount include Kelly Loefer, who lost her Senate seat in the January run-offs, who said Fulton County had “generally bad management.”

The electoral victory of Senator Jon Ossoff and Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia means that Democrats control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. With the deciding vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, they have a majority of one.

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Another supporter of the ruling is Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who tweeted about the longstanding issue about problems in voting. Mr Raffensperger received a call from Former President Donald Trump where he asked him for to “find” the votes he needed to win the state in January, according to reporting by The Washington Post who managed to get a recording of the call.

In April, Georgia Republicans in the state Senate voted for reform for voting, which is considered to make it harder to absentee vote, a move echoed by various Republican-controlled state Senates, such as Texas and Florida.

Due to COVID-19, lots of people voted in the 2020 election via mail-in ballot, and more people who opted to do that voted for President Joe Biden. Additionally, it requires voters to have personal identification, a move that disproportionately affects voters of colour and low income voters. The reform also removes the Secretary of State from the election board.

Currently, there is a similar ongoing recount in Maricopa County in Arizona. Brendan Keefe, a reporter for 11News, a local Atlanta news outlet wrote a thread on Twitter explaining the details and differences between one happening in Arizona and the proposed one in Georgia.

He tweeted, “the plaintiffs can examine the Fulton ballots but not touch them, which is unlike Arizona. They will not be able to handle the original ballots (or machines for that matter).”

According to Arizona’s Secretary of State, the machines are unable to be used again due to the potential for tampering with them.

Mr Trump has publicly critiqued Republicans who do not back the efforts to count the votes again in his recent interview with Chanel Rion. His most notable critics within the GOP include Rep. Liz Cheney and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Last week, Ms Cheney lost her top leadership position of chair of the Republican Conference to Rep. Elise Stefanik, making it difficult for GOP figures to speak out against the former leader.