Rand Paul Concerned By People Being Encouraged To Vote In Georgia

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took to Fox News earlier this morning to express his concern that soliciting votes from “traditionally non-voters” will change the outcome of the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs.

The segment started off with Fox host Maria Bartiromo spreading long-debunked conspiracy theories about voting in the state. Bartiromo claimed, among other things, that there were “more ballots than voters” in the state, which flipped for President-elect Biden, marking the first time that Georgia had voted for a Democrat since 1992. (A Reuters fact check shows this claim is false.)

Paul claimed to have heard of “1,700 people who voted twice,” and said that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger should “prosecute every one of them and deter them from doing it again.” His statement is misleading, however. The votes he refers to were not cast in November but in Georgia’s June primary and August runoff elections and involved people who had requested absentee ballots and also voted in-person. At the time Raffensperger made an announcement about these double votes, he said they “did not affect any of the results.”

But Paul’s most dubious claim came when he suggested that solicitations encouraging people to vote are of “great concern” to him because when “you solicit votes from typically non-voters, [that] you will affect and change the outcome.”

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The senator suggested that increased voter turnout would allow Democrats to control all three branches of government “and not for the better.”

You can watch Paul’s appearance in the video below.

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.