Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. is ‘embarrassed’ by misinformation surrounding election integrity in his state

As a pair of critical Senate runoff races approach on Jan. 5, Georgia Republican leaders find themselves in a conundrum, trying to balance indulging President Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud with supporting state GOP election officials. Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, is frustrated with the misinformation about the election process in his state. “I’m actually embarrassed at the amount of misinformation that continues to show up on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts and blogs that takes literally 10 seconds to debunk,” Duncan told Yahoo News. “Anybody could debunk it, but because they’ve let themselves get to a point where they’re more worried about flipping an election result than they are following the truth, that’s how we’ve gotten here.”

Video Transcript

GEOFF DUNCAN: I'm actually embarrassed at the amount of misinformation that continues to show up on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts and blogs, stuff that takes literally 10 seconds to debunk. Anybody could debunk it. But because they've let themselves get to a point where they're more worried about flipping an election result than they are following the truth, that's how we've gotten here.

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Lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. President-elect Biden is going to win the electoral votes here in Georgia. Certainly it's created a lot of emotion. Folks are on both sides of this issue, as far as Democrats and Republicans, and continuing to work at each other and also some folks that have brought up issues around election integrity. And I'm here to tell you, as the Lieutenant Governor, our Secretary of State and Attorney General have worked very, very hard to follow up on every single lead of fraud or impropriety. And I'm here to tell you that there has been no signs of systematic or organized fraud here in the state of Georgia, and I'm proud of that as the Lieutenant Governor. I'm proud as a Georgian. Regardless of the fact the person I voted for didn't win, that doesn't change my job description.

Certainly, this is a very confusing period of time, but it's one that I think it's important to separate fact from fiction. We do that our everyday lives, whether it be in our communities or in our businesses or jobs. This is one of those areas where facts do matter, and the facts do not support this flow of misinformation that continues to show up. And I encourage everybody, do not let yourself be hijacked by misinformation and falsehoods just because somebody wants to flip an election. And I would say that regardless of who won here in Georgia.

We're just better as Georgians, we're better as Americans, working that way. My encouragement to Republicans, my encouragement to the president, my encouragement to Senator Loeffler and Senator Perdue is, you know, let's redirect any sort of energy we've got right now talking about election fraud, let's redirect that on focusing on, short-term, getting them back into the Senate and reaffirming their position as senators here in Georgia.

The data points continue to line up to support the results that we have here in Georgia, and that is that Vice-President Biden is going to be sworn in as the 46th president on January 20, but it's important to remember this will still be America on January 20. We will still have a Constitution in place, and it will provide me, as a Republican, a conservative Republican, the opportunity to work against potentially ideas that I don't support, like tax increases on small business owners, like potentially adding layers of additional burdens on small business owners in the name of the environment, defunding or lowering the resources to law enforcement. I still have that constitutional right. I plan to exercise that right. But it doesn't change the outcome of the election.

I think that's the beauty of our system here is just because the person you voted for didn't win, it doesn't change your opportunity to still get things done. And I want to make sure as many folks as I can convince or reconvince-- I think we all know that at some point-- but reconvince these folks that maybe are in this no-man's-land of thinking that there's some sort of fraud out there that has encapsulated millions of people secretly, it's just a farce, and certainly I hope we move past this.

This party is bigger than today, and it's bigger than a person. And so we need to make sure that we continue to work for that. Our words do matter, and right now I'm not comfortable with the amount of misinformation that's continuing to flow.