Despite State GOP Claims To The Contrary, Georgia Is Ripe For Election Fraud

All eyes are on Georgia right now, where former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by a razor-thin margin of fewer than 12,000 votes, making the presidential contest there the closest in the country.

Votes were still being counted over the weekend, and state election officials said nearly all ballots would be counted by the end of the day on Monday. Because the margin between Biden and Trump is so thin, less than 1 percent, it appears Georgia is headed for a recount regardless of the final vote tally.

All of this is happening amid allegations of voter fraud and ballot-counting irregularities. Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler issued a joint statement Monday saying the management of the election in Georgia has become an “embarrassment.” They called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, to step down for failing “to deliver honest and transparent elections.”

Other Georgia officials pushed back. Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Ducan told CNN that his office had seen “no credible examples” of voter fraud or irregularities, and Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting systems implementation manager, held a news conference Monday to reassure the media that everything is fine and that any irregularities are a result of human error, not fraud.

But the story in Georgia isn’t that simple. Structural changes to Georgia’s election law implemented piecemeal over the past decade, specifically changes to absentee mail-in voting, have made the state more susceptible to voter fraud. Whether it’s on a scale large enough to change the outcome of the presidential election, no one knows right now. That’s one of the things we might find out in a recount.

Because most Americans don’t closely follow election laws and lawsuits in Georgia, here’s a quick breakdown of the ways recent changes to Georgia’s election laws might be affecting the presidential election.

Settlement Smuggled In Major Change to Mail-In Voting