Georgia elections chief: Trump 'suppressed' Republican vote with dire claims on mail-in voting

The margin in Georgia is razor thin — just 14,000 out of nearly 5 million votes cast in the 2020 presidential election.

Right now, Democrat Joe Biden leads President Trump. But newly discovered ballots found in two counties during a hand recount will reduce that margin to just under 13,000, said Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state's new voting system for the secretary of state's office.

Yet the state's Republican secretary of state said Tuesday that Trump has only himself to blame because he attacked the integrity of mail-in voting before the election.

"Twenty-four thousand people did not vote in the fall; either they did not vote absentee because they were told by the president, 'Don't vote absentee, it's not secure,'" Brad Raffensperger said in an interview with WSB-TV, an Atlanta-area ABC affiliate. "But then they did not come out and vote in person. He would have won by 10,000 votes. He actually depressed, suppressed his own voting base."

Raffensperger also blasted Trump for repeatedly claiming that voting irregularities cost him the state, saying, "That's just another red herring thrown out there by a campaign that doesn't have the votes."

Still, officials keep finding uncounted votes across the state.

"During the hand recount Tuesday, Fayette County uncovered 2,755 votes that were not included in the initial count," WSB-TV reported. "Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling said those ballots were scanned onto a card, but those votes were never uploaded into the initial count. He says there were several backups designed to catch this issue and that it falls to workers who didn't follow procedure.

"Of the votes that are now being added to the total, 1,577 were for President Donald Trump, 1,128 for Joe Biden and the rest were for Jo Jorgenson or write-ins. That changes the margin in the state by under 500 votes, with Biden now leading Trump by 12,929 votes."

Fayette is the second county to find hitherto uncounted votes.

On Monday, Floyd County found 2,600 votes that had been missed during the initial count on election night.

"The Secretary of State's office said it was human error and called for the elections director in the county to step down," the station reported. "An investigation has been opened in the county. Those votes changed the margin by about 800 in favor of President Trump."