Raffensperger blasts Warnock over voter suppression claims

Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blasted Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Democratic contemporaries for claiming that Georgia's elections were rife with voter suppression.

"During his victory speech, Mr. Warnock stated: 'Just because [voters] endured the rain and cold and all kinds of tricks in order to vote, doesn't mean that voter suppression does not exist,'" he wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. "I thought I had heard every conspiracy theory there was after the 2020 election, but the idea that Republicans control the weather to make it harder for Democrats to vote is a new one."

Warnock won reelection in a runoff contest against Trump-backed Herschel Walker this month. Raffensperger noted Warnock's victory and lamented he needed to respond to such claims from the victor of the election, noting that the proponents of such claims tended to be the contests' losers.

"For Donald Trump and his supporters, it was tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots that were supposedly cast but somehow never turned up... For Stacey Abrams and hers, it was tens of thousands of voters who were suppressed, not one of whom came forward during her three-year 'landmark' lawsuit," he contended.

Following her narrow 2018 defeat against now-Gov. Brian Kemp, R, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams repeatedly espoused the position that "voter suppression" had cost her the contest. A federal judge in October of this year, however, shut down her legal challenges to the state's election integrity laws which require voter identity and proof of citizenship.

Abrams handily lost her second gubernatorial bid, again to Kemp.

Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has long asserted that mail-in voter fraud affected the outcome of the Georgia contest in 2020, during which President Joe Biden won the state. All of Trump's legal challenges on the matter failed.

Raffensperger further addressed Warnock's criticisms, noting that the senator's reelection bid saw record turnout. 

"What was the result of all this 'voter suppression'?" he asked. "Record turnout in election after election and calls from Mr. Biden to move Georgia's primary up in the calendar to make it more influential in his re-election bid... he doesn't believe his own claims."

The Washington Examiner highlighted that more than 1 million voters had cast ballots early in the state's elections this year, breaking previous record figures.

"Mr. Warnock, Mr. Biden and their allies in the media — like Mr. Trump and Ms. Abrams before them — knew all along that their claims were ridiculous... Evidently they think divisive rhetoric is a good get-out-the-vote strategy, no matter how corrosive it is to democracy," Raffensperger concluded.