The Story:
Whatever else he may have done or may yet do in his life, Brad Raffensperger must know how his obituaries will begin. He was the man who was Secretary of State of Georgia on January 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump called him to pressure him to change the official count of votes so that Georgia’s electoral votes could be shifted to the Trump side of the column. Raffensperger, a Republican and a conservative with no high expectations for a Biden presidency, nonetheless to his credit resisted this pressure.
New Book:
Raffensperger has published a book, largely devoted to the discussion of that hour-long phone call and its context. The book is called “Integrity Counts,” and it was published by Simon & Schuster on Nov. 2.
On a morning television show on which he appeared, as part of his book tour, Raffensperger said, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Vice President Biden carried the state of Georgia,” and that continued pretensions to the contrary are “not healthy for American democracy.”
The Thing to Know:
A candidate needs 270 votes to win a presidential election. Joseph Biden received 306. Georgia has 16 electoral votes, so that even if it had flipped the count would still have been in Biden’s favor, 290 to 248. But Trump surely hoped that Georgia would be only one of the swing-state dominos, and the critical first one.
