An explosive recording of Donald Trump pressuring Georgia election officials to overturn the election results is further electrifying voters in Georgia’s elections for two US Senate seats, in Tuesday’s runoff that will determine which party controls Congress’ upper chamber.
In the call, made public by the Washington Post on Sunday, Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes”, to overturn Trump’s loss there. When Raffensperger refused, Trump suggested he and his aides may be committing a criminal offense.
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At an event on Monday, the Rev Raphael Warnock, the Democratic nominee for one of the seats, used the phone call to motivate supporters. He suggested there would be legal battles and challenges if the race was close.
“We need to win by a comfortable margin. Because, you know, funny things go on,” he said at a drive in event at a high school in Riverdale, about 20 minutes south of Atlanta. Warnock spoke to about 100 supporters at the drive-thru, who danced to Motown hits in warm weather and honked voraciously throughout his speech.
Warnock also noted that Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, had also called Raffensperger to pressure him over the election.
“They both said essentially the same thing. Can’t you find 11,000 votes? They wouldn’t be saying that unless there was some history. If you listen, what they were saying was ‘don’t you know how we roll?’’ he said.
More than 3 million people have already cast their ballots early in Georgia, a record number for a runoff. Democratic-leaning areas so far are seeing very high participation rates, while Republican voters appear to be holding back, said Charles Bullock, a professor at the University of Georgia. Early voting, he added, showed Black voters were “punching above their weight”.
“Republicans have to play catch up, and they can certainly do that,” he said.
Some voters said they weren’t surprised by the call – Trump spent nearly all of 2020 saying the election was rigged – but expressed uncertainty over how it would impact the race.
“The Republicans keep handing more and more to us … It really is hard to say, it couldn’t have happened at a better time,” said Rick Heson, 55, who covered nearly the entire hood of his car with signs during the Warnock event. “I think it will have some impact, but [Trump’s] followers are diehard.”
“I think it might discourage some Republicans, [who think] ‘you know the election was stolen, they’re gonna steal this one too’,” said Tyoniesha Plair, who stood next to her car with a Black Votes Matter as her nine-year-old son Derrick watched the sunroof.
Cardisha Webb, 25, who has spent the last several weeks canvassing neighborhoods telling people how to cast their ballots, said she thought people would be more motivated to turn out because of the call because it crystallized the importance of their vote.
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Biden slams Trump’s ‘whining and complaining’ while campaigning in Georgia – video
But on the last full day before the election, Webb and several dozen other organizers weren’t leaving anything to chance. Early in the morning, about 100 canvassers – many of whom have spent the last several weeks going out in neighborhoods – gathered in a church parking lot in Atlanta for their last full day of canvassing. Organized by the group Stand Up Georgia, a non-profit that advocates for voter participation, their goal was to hit just over 6,000 doors on Monday, bringing their statewide total to 100,000.
The effort is part of a larger movement, jolted by Stacey Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign, to bring new voters, especially voters of color into the political process. It’s a movement many say is crucial to turning the state blue.
A fleet of vans with the masked canvassers left the parking lot a little after 9am, with many of the canvassers munching on Dunkin’ coffee and Bojangles biscuits inside. At a quiet cul-de-sac community in a suburb, the organizers unloaded in twos and threes, methodically leaving flyers telling people how to vote on Monday.
The driver and most senior member of the group was Michael Thibodeaux, 71, who said he felt energized by seeing Georgia vote for a Democrat in November.
“It just goes to show you that you don’t have to accept the status quo, that you can make change,” he said. “It’s vitally important that we take a stand and use what we actually fought for an marched for an even died for in the 50s and 60s, which is the right to vote.”
Later in the afternoon, Gabriel Sterling, a top official in Raffensperger’s office, held a press conference debunking several of Trump’s baseless claims about fraud. “This is all easily, provably false,” he said at the state capitol.
Some Democrats have also called for an investigation into whether Trump broke both federal and Georgia laws prohibiting election interference. Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton county, where the call took place, said in a Monday statement she was “disturbed” by the call and pledged to investigate it, should she get a referral.
Tasha Mosley, the district attorney in neighboring Clayton county, told the Guardian on Monday she initially thought the call was a joke. She said Trump was walking a “very fine line”.
“It didn’t sit well with me at all,” she said.
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