Though Raffensperger's allegation has been denied by Lindsey Graham, there is a possibility that other Republicans may have pressurised him.
Speaking to CNN, Raffensperger said the South Carolina Republican asked whether he could check signatures on mail-in ballots during Georgia’s recount and use a high frequency of mismatches to justify throwing away mail-in ballots in certain counties.
In the interview, Raffensperger expressed anger over allegations coming from Trump and his allies, including the claims that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia’s voting machines, is a “leftist” company with ties to Venezuela that engineered thousands of Trump votes to be left out of the count. According to Raffensperger, he and his wife have been receiving death threats, including a text to him that read: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.”
However, while speaking to POLITICO, Graham denied pressuring Raffensperger to throw away legal ballots, saying that he had a ‘very pleasant’ conversation about the state’s signature verification process.
The conversation was first reported by Washinton Post on Nov 13. The same day, a Georgia lawyer sympathetic to Trump filed a lawsuit to prevent the state from certifying the election until all signatures could be verified. When presented with Graham’s refusal to accept, Raffensperger said that the lawsuit sought to use a tactic similar to the one Graham proposed to stop the inclusion of absentee ballots in the state.
According to a Washington Post report, Raffensperger has said that ‘every accusation of fraud will be thoroughly investigated, but that there is currently no credible evidence that fraud occurred on a broad enough scale to affect the outcome of the election’.
Though Graham has denied mounting any pressure on Raffensperger, there is a possibility that Raffensperger may have faced pressure from other Republicans. Therefore, the claim is partly true.
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