Georgia won't let election go

The Georgia legislature will be forced to deal with the after-effects of the 2020 election regardless of who ends up in the Oval Office.

"I hear a lot of concern," said State Rep. Trey Kelly (R-Cedartown), adding that his phone has been non-stop lately, "that this was an election that faced fraud and sophisticated manipulation."

Some of the fraud allegations resulted from "low tech" irregularities ranging from non-state residents registering and voting in Georgia and the same ballots rerun through vote counting machines multiple times. Other allegations stem from more sophisticated measures, including allegations that Dominion voting machines used throughout the state weighted Biden votes to count more than Trump votes.

Investigators ran a forensic test on voting machines in Ware County, Georgia, which bore out evidence of those allegations. In those tests, machines received the same number of votes for both candidates and the print out said Biden received 26 percent more votes than Trump. Repeated tests bore out the same results.

There is also controversy surrounding vote tabulation at the State Farm Arena. Originally, election officials told the media that counting had to stop around 10:30 p.m. election night because of a water main break. GOP challengers were told to go home. Yet, video cameras show poll workers continuing to count votes with some pulling out cases of ballots from underneath a table after everyone left.

State officials dismiss questions into the incident, saying the ballots pulled out from under the table was normal procedure. They also told members of a state Senate Judiciary Committee that telling election monitors to go home was a "miscommunication" as there wasn't a water main break. In fact, a toilet had overflowed election morning and was fixed by 8:07 a.m. causing no disruption in work. Officials offered no explanation for how the water main story got started or who gave it to the press.

One of the possible resolutions was for Georgia's governor to call a special session.

Gov. Brian Kemp refused to call a special session, even though President Donald Trump urged him to do so and a petition of 150,000 signatures was delivered to his office on Monday. The reasoning was that a special session was unnecessary as the United States Supreme Court would decide on cases resulting from election irregularities.

Those who wanted a special session were aiming to have legislators take back their Article 2 powers under the U.S. Constitution where they chose Georgia's electors for the Dec. 14 vote. With Georgia's legislature under GOP control, the electors would have been Republican voting for Trump even though the state was certified to go to Democrat former Vice President Joe Biden.

That would have been more complicated than many speculate because legislators would have to change state law before they could appoint their own electors. Georgia's electoral law was changed around 100 years ago to appoint Electoral College delegates according to the popular vote.

The U.S. Supreme Court could put the election issue back in the hands of legislatures in the swing states depending on if and how it rules in a new lawsuit filed by the State of Texas. In that suit, Texas states the actions of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, de-franchised voters in its state. Texas alleged it followed the U.S. Constitution in organizing its election process while those in the swing states did not, therefore diluting the vote of Texans. So far, 17 other states joined Texas in the lawsuit. The case has been docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court with a Thursday, Dec. 10, 3 p.m. deadline for defendant states to respond.

Kelly said the Georgia General Assembly will consider a bill next year address election issues. However, there isn't any drafted version yet so it's hard to say what all it will include. He will likely be key in developing and introducing it, Kelly said.

"We have to do the best to protect the integrity of the election," he said.

One of the issues that will be addressed will be mail-in voting. Kelly was opposed to the blanket canvassing of mail in voting applications.

"I was in opposition with the Secretary of State on universal mailing of election ballots," Kelly said. He said he felt the change was improper and would allow for a lot of fraud.

Kelly said the current concern is with the runoff U.S. Senate elections set for Jan. 5. Georgia is pivotal to Republicans keeping the Senate majority as Sen. David Perdue faces Democrat Jon Ossoff and Sen. Kelly Loeffer is in a runoff with Democrat Raphael Warnock.

Calls to boycott voting in the runoff troubles Kelly. Too much is riding on the runoffs, he said.

"What we can't have is Republicans staying at home because they think their vote doesn't matter," he said.