Dec. 6 (UPI) — Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said Sunday he does not expect Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special legislative session to overturn the result of the state’s election.
Duncan told CNN’s State of the Union that he was not personally on a call between the Republican governor and President Donald Trump in which he reportedly asked Kemp to call a special session, but said he “absolutely” believes it to be the case that the governor will not.
“The governor and I have spoken often about this and calling the General Assembly back in at this point would be almost along the lines of a solution trying to find a problem,” Duncan said. “And we’re certainly not going to move the goalposts at this point in the election. We are going to continue to follow the letter of the law, which gives us a very clear-cut direction as to how to execute an election. And we’re going to continue to take that on.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also said he did not believe there was will in the general assembly for a special session, adding the state has “never found systemic fraud, not enough to overturn the election.”
“The people of Georgia spoke in this election and obviously, I’m a conservative Republican disappointed in the results,” he told ABC News’ This Week. “But I said we’ll count every legal vote and work hard to make sure that no illegal votes were counted and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
Georgia certified its election results late last month after completing a manual recount of about 5 million votes, which showed that President-elect Joe Biden secured about 12,300 more votes than Trump in the state. And a later preliminary results of a machine recount showed Biden won by about 900 fewer than the hand count.
On Saturday night, Trump criticized Kemp for not acting on the allegations of fraud, during a rally in Valdosta for two Republican Senate candidates facing a run-off election in the state that will decide the balance of the chamber.
“Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. “So far we haven’t been able to find the people in Georgia willing to do the right thing.”
Duncan on Sunday called Trump’s messaging surrounding the presidential election “concerning.”
“The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process,” he said in reference to the Jan. 5 run-off. “They’re only hurting it.”
Appearing on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday, Gabriel Sterling, voting implementation manager for Georgia, said Trump’s statements are false and are “stoking anger and fear among his supporters.
“This undermines democracy,” Sterling said. “We have got to get to a point where responsible people act responsibly.”
