Within the early hours after polls closed in Georgia on Tuesday, Raffensperger used to be the one one of the crucial former President’s objectives in Georgia going through any doubt about his reelection bid. He held a transparent lead over Hice, however the presence of 2 different Republican applicants threatened to stay the incumbent’s general beef up underneath the 50% threshold had to keep away from a runoff.
Trump subsidized Hice, a conservative congressman who had aligned himself intently with the previous President, from the release of his marketing campaign for secretary of state in March 2021. Hice repeated Trump’s claims about election fraud right through the race. He claimed in a debate previous this month that the 2020 election were an “absolute crisis” underneath Raffensperger’s management, with out providing any proof or main points to beef up that declare.
Raffensperger, in the meantime, has lengthy defended Georgia’s election procedure. He used to be additionally a staunch recommend of the vote casting regulation that the Republican-controlled legislature authorized in 2021, which imposes a raft of recent restrictions on mail-in vote casting, prohibits offering meals and water to other people ready in line to vote and extra. Raffensperger has additionally driven for a constitutional modification to prohibit noncitizen vote casting, even if it is already unlawful underneath Georgia regulation.
CNN’s Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena contributed to this document.
