Here’s a little-known story about how grassroots activists defeated Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s mass vote disqualification campaign.
Raffensperger’s no hero. He thought that he had disqualified enough votes to give Trump the win in Georgia, because they disqualified so many. But what they didn’t expect was groups like Rainbow PUSH, Black Voters Matter Fund, and the Transformative Justice Coalition, who manned phone banks.
When a ballot is disqualified in Georgia, you have the right as a voter to go in and “cure” it — fix it. So if you used a red pen, you refill out the ballot in black. If you signed your signature in a different way than when you registered or on your driver’s license, you can re-sign it. And these groups literally got tens of thousands of people to go into County Clerk’s offices and fix their ballots — which Raffensperger has told me he wasn’t expecting. He was dead shocked.
It wasn’t the Democratic party that did this. The Democratic party sat on its hands. But the activists went out and got thousands and thousands of voters to go back to the County Clerk’s office and fix their ballots. And that’s what put Biden over the top, and ultimately put Ossoff and Warnock in the Senate, because of this tremendous grassroots effort.
Raffensperger thought that he had beaten them, but he wasn’t going to go to jail for Trump. That’s where Raffensperger drew the line. That doesn’t make him a hero. It makes him a co-conspirator who got cold feet and jumped out of the getaway car.
Watch the full Rick Smith Show interview and subscribe to the podcast.
Greg Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie, available on Amazon ”” and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!
Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book ”” or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.
Support The Palast Investigative Fund and keep our work alive! Become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!
Or support us by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Sustainable Markets Foundation which automatically goes to the benefit of The Palast Investigative Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info .
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter or his special list for Poems & Stories.