On the night when one state Republican candidate for Senate refused to show up for a debate and the other refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the presidential election, Georgia’s Republican governor and lieutenant governor released a joint statement declaring that any attempt to undermine the state’s popular vote would be unconstitutional, WXIA NBC-11 Atlanta reports.
Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan released a statement that said a number of Republican state senators have called for a special session of the state legislature to select a slate of Electoral College electors that would vote for lame duck president Donald Trump, not President-elect Joe Biden, who won the popular vote in Georgia.
“State law is clear: the legislature could only direct an alternative method for choosing presidential electors if the election was not able to be held on the date set by federal law,” the statement reads. “In the 1960s, the General Assembly decided that Georgia’s presidential electors will be determined by the winner of the state’s popular vote.”
The statement continues, “Any attempt by the legislature to retroactively change that process for the November 3rd election would be unconstitutional and immediately enjoined by the courts, resulting in a long legal dispute and no short-term resolution.”
Kemp reportedly has received pressure from Trump to allow the legislature to name electors to vote for Trump, disenfranchising the voters of Georgia. Biden won the state by nearly a 12,000 vote margin out of 4.9 million votes cast.