Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday that President Donald Trump would have been victorious in Georgia's election had he not discouraged people from participating in mail-in voting.
During the campaign, Trump claimed that mail-in voting would lead to widespread election fraud on the part of Democrats. Instead, Trump told people to show up at polling places on election day to cast their votes in person. Georgia's electoral process has come under scrutiny after an audit of the ballot revealed two ballots in two counties that were not originally counted. The margin between Trump and President-elect Joe Biden remained thin on Tuesday with Biden leading Trump in the popular vote by over 12,000 ballots.
In an interview with WSB, Raffensperger said there were 24,000 Republicans in Georgia who voted in the June primaries, but "did not vote in the fall either."
"They did not vote absentee because they were told by the president don't go to absentee, it's not secure," Raffensperger said. "But then they did not come out and vote in person."
"He would have won by 10,000 votes," Raffensperger said. "He actually depressed, suppressed his own voting base."
Georgia has voted for a Republican presidential candidate in every election between 2000 and 2016. Many voters chose to participate in mail-in voting in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden and other Democrats claimed that casting ballots by mail would help voters remain safe by keeping them out of crowded polling areas. Trump voiced his opinion in April that voting should be done in person and that identification should be provided at the polling place to avoid cheating.
In a post-election address, Trump alleged that mail-in voting had "destroyed" the voting system.
"It's a corrupt system," Trump said. "And it makes people corrupt even if they aren't by nature, but they become corrupt; it's too easy. They want to find out how many votes they need, and they seem to be able to find them."
Although some uncounted ballots have been discovered in Georgia, Raffensperger announced Tuesday that an audit of voting machines statewide uncovered no evidence of tampering.
Tabulation errors in Georgia have been blamed on human error. On Monday, Raffensperger's office reported the discovery of 2,600 ballots in Floyd County that had not been tabulated. Georgia Voting System Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling called the error "an amazing blunder" and called for Clark County Election Director Robert Brady to step down.
Election officials in Fayette County found 2,755 votes on Tuesday. According to Sterling, the votes were scanned onto a memory card but never uploaded into the tabulation system by election workers.
Newsweek reached out to the Fayette County Board of Elections and Voter Registration for comment.
The number of ballots discovered so far is not expected to alter the results of Georgia's presidential election. Many media outlets have already called the state in Biden's favor. After the ballots discovered in Fayette County were added to the total, the margin between Trump and Biden shifted by fewer than 500 votes.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
