Rachel Maddow warned that Georgia could “throw” next year’s presidential election if local Republicans refuse to certify votes.
Speaking on her MSNBC show, the political commentator reacted to news that Republican election board members in Cobb, DeKalb and Spalding counties in Georgia refused to sign off on local election results last week.
They cited technology issues including check-in data errors, districting mistakes and concerns about voting machines, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but were outvoted by other members of the board, meaning the votes were certified.
Maddow implied that Republicans were using disputing votes as a tactic. She said there was “not necessarily anything wrong with these elections, or with these results.”
Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for NBC
“This is just becoming the default Republican position now, ‘elections are inherently suspect now, all of them,'” she added.
Newsweek has contacted the Georgia Republicans and Georgia’s Elections Division by email to comment on this story.
Maddow said that Georgia Republicans may challenge elections next year, including the 2024 presidential election, in which Georgia will be a key swing state.
In the 2020 election, Biden won the state by 0.2 percent, which was the narrowest margin of victory in the country that year, sparking claims from Trump that the election was stolen from him, despite there being no evidence to prove this.
Trump is facing two criminal indictments, including one in Georgia, over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He denies all charges.
The New York Times and Siena College published a poll on November 5 showing that voters are backing Trump by margins of 4 to 10 percentage points in five of six important battleground states, including Georgia where Trump is ahead of Biden by 6 points, 49 to 43 percent a year prior to the election.
Republicans have in the past refused to certify elections. In the rural Arizona county Cochise, for instance, Republican officials were sued by the secretary of state after they refused to certify the results of the 2022 midterm election without evidence of wrongdoing.
If a county election board refused to certify a major election, which is a mandatory step in finalizing election outcomes, its results could be delayed and disputed and the decision could go to court.
“Georgia Republicans are pretty clearly telegraphing their intentions for next year,” Maddow said. “One county board refusing to certify its election results could throw the whole state and therefore the whole election into chaos.”
Georgia is “rejecting totally normal election results out of hand because that’s what Republicans do now,” she concluded.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.