November 17, 2020

UPDATE:

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Senator Lindsey Graham reached for his phone and placed a call across state lines to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger. In that call, he pressured Raffensberger to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, a request that was completely off the wall and patently illegal.

This revelation came after Raffensberger ripped into Rep. Doug Collins, calling him "a liar" and "a charlatan."

Raffensperger told the Post that the atmosphere is so toxic that he and his wife, Tricia, have received death threats in recent days, including a text to him that read: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.”

But bar none, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham's little phone call made a lasting and very sour impression. In the video at the top, there's a clip of Raffensberger speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Here's the exchange.

BLITZER: You described to the Washington Post a conversation you had with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Friday. You came away with the impression he essentially wanted you to toss out mail-in ballots. What exactly did he say to you?

RAFFENSBERGER: He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters. I got the sense that it implied that then you could throw those out, look at the counties with the highest free error of signatures. So that's the impression that I got.

BLITZER: I just want to be clear on this, Mr. Secretary. You say Senator Graham wanted you to find ways to get rid of legally cast ballots? Because CNN asked him about these allegations, he denied them. He says that's ridiculous. His word, "that's ridiculous."

RAFFENSBERGER: It's just an implication of look hard and see how many ballots you can throw out.

Lawrence O'Donnell rightly characterized Graham as an "enemy of the voters.

"See how many ballots you can throw out. ", he repeated. "That's what the enemies of the voters are hoping for tonight."

"Joe Biden will take the office on January 20th and at least there's nothing that the enemies of the voters can do to stop that," he declared.

I'm fairly certain there is a price to be paid -- or SHOULD BE, anyway -- for a sitting U.S. Senator to call for legally cast ballots to be tossed out, don't you think?

CREW has a message for Graham: Resign his chairmanship now.

“For the chairman of the Senate committee charged with oversight of our legal system to have reportedly suggested that an election official toss out large numbers of legal ballots from American voters is appalling. Not only is it wrong for Senator Graham to apparently contemplate illegal behavior, but his suggestion undermines the integrity of our elections and the faith of the American people in our democracy. Under the guise of rooting out election fraud, it looks like Graham is suggesting committing it. That is unacceptable, and Senator Graham should step down from his chairmanship immediately.”

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