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One of Georgia’s top election officials has passionately called on Donald Trump to tone down his rhetoric by questioning the election results, saying the president is “inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”
Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, also issued the stern warning that if Trump doesn’t control his supporters, “someone will get hurt.”
“Mr. President, it looks like he probably lost the state of Georgia,” Sterling said at a news conference Tuesday, during which he was visibly angry. “We are investigating, there is always a possibility, I understand. You have the right to go to court. What you don’t have the ability to do, and you need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to die and it is not okay. Not well.”
Sterling, the voting systems manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said last week that he had police protection at his home due to threats he received after the election results were announced. Trump lost Georgia to Biden by around 13,000 votes.
Sterling also said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s wife had received “sexualized threats.”
Raffensperger has been the target of constant attacks by the president for his defeat in Georgia, and he recently told The Guardian that he had received death threats. Last week, Trump had called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” Sterling noted, adding: “That helped open the floodgates to this kind of trash.”
Sterling said his anger flared when he learned that a contractor helping with the state’s count received death threats after someone recorded video of him transferring a report to a county computer and falsely said the young man was tampering with data. electoral.
Sterling’s statement came as another top Georgia Republican, the state’s lieutenant governor, also spoke out against unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
In an interview with CNN, Geoff Duncan called the amount of electoral misinformation “alarming.”
“It certainly is disheartening to see people who are willing to expose their character and morals just so they can spread a half-truth or a lie in efforts to maybe change an election,” he said. “That is not what democracy is about.
“In the long run, I think we damage the brand of the Republican Party, which is certainly bigger than a person,” he added.
Tensions are high in Georgia, where two second-round elections in January will determine the shape of the United States Congress, either consolidating a Republican Senate in opposition to the presidency of Joe Biden or giving the Democratic party control over the White House. , the House and the Senate.
To underscore the importance of the battle, Trump, who has barely made any public appearances since his defeat in the Nov.3 election, will demonstrate in the state on Saturday.
