Sen. Raphael Warnock responded Monday to an op-ed by Georgia’s secretary of state that known as him an “election denier” over his remarks on voter suppression.
“I need to spend quite a lot of time capturing down false claims about our elections in Georgia,” Brad Raffensperger wrote in The Wall Avenue Journal Sunday. “Often they arrive from losers. However typically even victorious candidates make false claims about our elections.”
Raffensperger referred partly to Warnock’s victory speech after successful a runoff for Georgia’s Senate seat earlier this month, during which Warnock stated, “Simply because folks endured lengthy traces that wrapped round buildings some blocks lengthy, simply because they endured the rain and the chilly and every kind of methods with a purpose to vote, doesn’t suggest that voter suppression doesn’t exist.”
Raffensperger wrote, “I assumed I had heard each conspiracy idea there was after the 2020 election, however the concept Republicans management the climate to make it tougher for Democrats to vote is a brand new one. … And I do not even know what Mr. Warnock means by ‘every kind of different methods.'”
In an unique interview with “CBS Mornings” on Monday, Warnock responded, saying, “The truth that folks have needed to overcome limitations doesn’t suggest these limitations do not exist.”
“We actually noticed school college students and seniors in traces that had been hours and hours and hours lengthy,” he stated. “Possibly [Raffensperger is] proud of that. I am not. I feel we are able to do higher than that.”
Warnock’s runoff election victory this month gave Democrats their 51st seat within the Senate and gave him his first full six-year time period, after having beforehand gained a particular election for the seat in 2021. He’s the primary Black American to signify Georgia within the Senate and the primary Black Democrat elected to the chamber from a southern state.
His win got here amid what he and different Democrats seen as voter suppression efforts from Republicans, who’ve pointed to the state’s excessive voter turnout to rebut these claims.
Republicans within the state stated after Warnock’s win that considerations over a 2021 regulation imposing new restrictions on voting had been overblown. Democrats, nonetheless, imagine voters made their voices identified regardless of these obstacles.
The Related Press contributed to this text.
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