Georgia's Republican secretary of state says railing against absentee ballots cost Trump the state

(Image credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

published 17 November 2020

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger isn't holding back at this point.

Raffensperger has been at the forefront of an intra-party feud in Georgia over his handling of the election, which he has defended ardently, and over unfounded claims of voter fraud. On Tuesday, in an interview with Atlanta's WSB-TV, the secretary reportedly took the fight straight to President Trump, who he suggested had no one to blame but himself for his defeat.

Trump repeatedly railed against absentee voting leading up to the election, and Raffensperger believes that if he didn't sow distrust in the system, he could've picked up Georgia's 16 electoral votes, arguing that 24,000 Republicans who voted absentee in Georgia's GOP primaries did not vote in the general election. Raffensperger went so far as to say that Trump incidentally "suppressed" his own base with his complaints. Tim O'Donnell

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.