Trump-backed Perdue says he wouldn’t have certified Georgia 2020 results
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Perdue at a December 2020 campaign event in Columbus, Georgia. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images
Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue wouldn’t have signed the certification of the state’s 2020 election results if he had been governor at the time, the former Senate Republican told Axios.
- “Not with the information that was available at the time and not with the information that has come out now. They had plenty of time to investigate this. And I wouldn’t have signed it until those things had been investigated, and that’s all we were asking for," he said.
Why it matters: There has been no evidence widespread fraud took place in Georgia's elections last year, and the November results were counted three times, once by hand.
Driving the news: The former Georgia senator — who is now running with former President Donald Trump’s endorsement to unseat Gov. Kemp in a GOP primary — spoke to Axios by phone Wednesday afternoon in one of his first interviews since declaring his bid.
Flashback: When Gov. Brian Kemp signed the state's election certification, he pointed out that state law required him to do so.
In an interview with Axios, Perdue said he would also have called for a special session of the legislature if he had been governor one year ago.
- Perdue said the idea of the session, which he said he asked Kemp to call at the time, was not to change the November outcome, but to "protect and fix what was wrong for the January election."
- At the time, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that a special session would have amounted to "nullifying the will of the people."
- Georgia's law does not offer the governor or the secretary of state the ability to not certify an election. Any challenge to an election's integrity must happen through the courts. All legal challenges to the 2020 election in Georgia have failed.
The bottom line: Perdue conceded his Senate race loss to Jon Ossoff in January.
- “I’ve never asked for a reversal," he pointed out.
- “What I’ve asked for is to get this cleaned up, to make sure that our elections going forward are fair and can rebuild the confidence of people.”
