Georgia's GOP lieutenant governor says Rudy Giuliani's false voter fraud claims triggered voting restrictions
Rudy Giuliani's false claims of election fraud weren't enough to overturn the presidential election, but they did motivate Republican lawmakers in Georgia to pass a law that restricts voting rights, the state's Republican lieutenant governor said.
Under the new election law, signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last month, it's harder for voters to request and drop off absentee ballots; ballot drop boxes are limited; voters can't be approached and handed food or water while they wait in line to cast their ballots; and the secretary of state is no longer chairman or a voting member of the Georgia State Election Board.
During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) said the restrictions are "the fallout from the 10 weeks of misinformation that flew in from former President Donald Trump. I went back over the weekend to really look at where this really started to gain momentum in the legislature, and it was when Rudy Giuliani showed up in a couple of committee rooms and spent hours spreading misinformation and sowing doubt across, you know, hours of testimony."
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Joe Biden won Georgia, a fact that was affirmed during three different ballot counts in the state. Giuliani still tried to get Georgia to overturn the election results, appearing before state lawmakers to spread multiple falsehoods, including that thousands of dead people voted. He also claimed, without any evidence, that the voting machines were "like Swiss cheese. You can invade them. You can get in them. You can change the vote." He is now the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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