Georgia investigating outside groups for illegally registering voters ahead of crucial Senate elections

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has announced investigations into third-party groups illegally registering voters ahead of January’s pivotal Senate runoff elections. Three groups are being probed.

The Republican Party is counting on the re-election of Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in January’s runoff elections in Georgia. Should both lose to their Democratic rivals, control of the Senate would be split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. So if Biden is confirmed president and Kamala Harris officially becomes VP, she is expected to cast the tie-breaking vote and hand both houses of Congress to the Democrats for the first time since 2011.

With the stakes high, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Monday that several activist groups were being investigated for allegedly registering out-of-state voters. The groups – America Votes, Vote Forward, and the New Georgia Project – are all pro-Democrat organizations.

“These third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting. If they do so, they will be held responsible,” he said.

The New Georgia Project was founded by Stacey Abrams, who lost her bid for Georgia’s governorship in 2018 but has remained a regular commentator and vocal Democrat activist. Abrams has been lauded by the liberal media for turning out the black vote in Georgia, but should Raffensperger's investigation uncover any wrongdoing, her organization could face serious consequences.

Raffensperger warned earlier this month that anyone registering people to vote illegally could be charged under Georgia’s racketeering conspiracy laws, and could face a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. Moreover, anyone registering to vote illegally could do a ten-year stretch behind bars.

Outside of his investigations, Raffensperger has been thrust into the national spotlight ever since he signed off on Joe Biden’s apparent 12,000-vote win in Georgia. Raffensperger certified Biden as winner of the state’s 16 Electoral College votes more than a week ago, a move that drew the ire of President Trump, who maintains that Biden won the Peach State by fraud.

Calling him a “so-called Republican,” Trump unloaded on Raffensperger for failing to insist on checking ballot signatures against voter rolls during Georgia’s first state-mandated recount, and added that signature matching could “also be very helpful” to Loeffler and Perdue in the runoffs.

Raffensperger has also been named in a lawsuit by former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, who alleges that he and Governor Brian Kemp turned a blind eye to security concerns involving voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, a foreign-owned company the Trump campaign insists helped rig the election in favor of Biden.

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