ATHENS, Georgia — Representative Jody Hice (R-GA-10), currently running to replace Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, launched a statewide tour in Athens on Tuesday to address Georgia’s election integrity issues.
Hice met supporters at the Athens-Ben Epps Airport.
And, during the stop, Jessica Fore, a Democrat running for Hice’s 10th Congressional seat, challenged Hice on Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
“You voted to decertify my vote in Congress because I voted for Biden,” Fore said.
“[Former President Donald] Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes to reverse the results of the election. What would you do in that situation?”
Hice told Fore that he challenged the 2020 election due to corruption.
“For example, we unilaterally had a decision to send out absentee ballot requests to everyone in our voter registration file, knowing that our voter registration power in Georgia is between 8 percent to 15 percent inactive. When you send that out to 7 million people with virtually no voter identification, let’s just round it off at 10 percent. That means we have nearly 700,000 voters who, for whatever reason, do not belong on our voter registration file and they are sent an absentee ballot request to get a ballot with no voter identification. That is problematic,” Hice said.
“That is why I challenged the votes in Georgia. It wasn’t your vote. It was the process that was created by Brad Raffensperger. It’s the absentee ballot requests. It was the drop off boxes. The lack of voter identification from the ballots. All of these things cumulatively created an atmosphere where I do not believe that we had a fair and honest election.”
After Tuesday’s event had concluded, Hice told The Georgia Star News that Raffensperger “almost single-handedly destroyed election integrity in this state.”
Hice told audience members that the nation is experiencing unrest in several different places and “the epicenter of all of those issues is election integrity.”
“If that is protected and safeguarded then we the people can deal with the other problems that we are facing, but if that issue is removed from us then we have a whole other battle on our hands,” Hice said.
Hice announced in March that he wants to replace Raffensperger. The election is scheduled for next year.
Hice took office in 2015 to represent Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, according to his campaign biography. He serves on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. For the 116th Congress, Hice serves as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Government Operations for the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star and The Georgia Star News. Follow Chris on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and GETTR. Email tips to [email protected].
