The State of Georgia's residents and 7 Million Active Voters deserve a democracy that values and holds sacred the freedom to vote.
Having fair and equal representation is the cornerstone of American democracy. Every citizen should have equal access to the ballot box to choose those representatives who will fight for the issues and policies they care about. Having equal access to voting is a civil right that is recognized and protected by the Constitution. The Constitution requires states to apportion their congressional, state, and local electoral districts according to the “one person, one vote” principle, and state legislatures must ensure fair and equal representation for all people. These obligations uphold the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
On January 2, 2021, during an hour-long conference call, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to change the state's election results from the 2020 presidential election. Trump had been defeated by Joe Biden in the election, but refused to accept the outcome,[1] and made a months-long effort to overturn the results. Before the call to Raffensperger, Trump and his campaign spoke repeatedly to state and local officials in at least three states in which he had lost, urging them to recount votes, throw out some ballots,[2][3] or replace the Democratic slate of electors with a Republican slate. Trump's call with Raffensperger was reported by The Washington Post and other media outlets the day after it took place.[4][5][6]
According to the publicly released recording of the call and reports made by multiple news agencies, Trump attempted to pressure Raffensperger into reinvestigating the election results, despite being repeatedly told that there was no electoral error. Trump's repeated efforts to convince Raffensperger to find some basis to overturn the election results were perceived as pleading and threatening. At one point on the call, Trump told Raffensperger, "What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state."[7] During the call, Trump falsely suggested that Raffensperger could have committed a criminal offense by refusing to overturn the state's election results.[6] Legal experts have suggested that Trump's behavior and demands could have violated state and federal laws.