Top election officials in Georgia and Nevada are under attack from President Trump and other fellow Republicans in the aftermath of the heated election season.
Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said in a statement Tuesday that she has not spoken with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who says he spoke with officials in the Silver State regarding the election process.
In response, Cegavske issued the following statement:
“I have not spoken with Senator Lindsey Graham or any other members of Congress regarding the 2020 general election in Nevada or my role in the post-election certification process. Under Nevada law (NRS 293.395), the Secretary of State plays only a ministerial role in the process of certifying election returns. Nevada’s election returns are certified by the county commissioners in each of Nevada’s seventeen counties. The returns are then summarized in an abstract of votes, at which point the abstracts of votes are certified by the seventeen county election officials and transmitted to my office. I then present the abstracts to the members of the Nevada Supreme Court who canvass the votes for federal, statewide, and legislative offices. At no point do I, as Secretary of State, have the authority to certify or not certify election results. Ultimately, it is the Governor who declares the outcomes and issues certificates of election.”
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Related: Trump, GOP Drop Nevada Court Appeal Of Ballot Count Case
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been disputing claims of widespread voter fraud from Trump’s campaign since unofficial returns have shown Democrat Joe Biden with a 14,000-vote lead in the once reliably red state.
Georgia’s two U.S. senators have demanded that Raffensperger resign.
The state’s Republican governor and members of Congress have pushed for investigations.
Raffensperger has sought to appease Republicans somewhat by ordering a hand-tallied audit of the presidential race. But he says he doesn’t think the outcome will change.
In an interview with "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday, Raffensperger detailed a phone call he had with Graham, one of President Trump's closest allies on Capitol Hill, during which he said the senator suggested absentee ballots from counties with high rates of nonmatching signatures be disqualified.
"When Senator Graham called, I just assumed that he was calling about the two runoffs for the senators, so I called him back," Raffensperger said. "During our discussion, he asked if ballots could be matched back to the envelope — the absentee ballots could be matched back to the envelope. I explained our process, after it went through two sets of signature match, at that point they were separated. But then Senator Graham implied for us to audit the envelopes and then throw out the ballots for counties who have the highest frequency error of signatures. I tried to help explain that because we did signature match, you couldn't tie the signatures back anymore to those ballots."
Raffensperger told "CBS This Morning" that he spoke with his legal counsel about Graham's comments and "decided the best action was not to get back and re-engage."
"When I went down this other path, I think the best thing was just to disengage and move forward," he said. "We want to make sure that every legal vote counts and every illegal vote doesn't count."
The South Carolina senator told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday that Raffensperger's characterization of his comments was "ridiculous."
"I thought it was a good conversation," he said. "I'm surprised to hear him characterize it that way."
Graham said he reached out to Raffensperger on his own, not atTrump's urging, as he wanted to learn more about Georgia's signature verification process.
"If he feels threatened by that conversation, he's got a problem," the senator said. "I actually thought it was a good conversation. I learned a lot about it. Rather than hearing all these internet things, I just call the guy and say, how does it work, how can you make it better?"
(CBS News contributed to this report.)
