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According to a report, the incumbent US President Donald Trump has insisted on a subsequent change in the election result in the state of Georgia in an unusual phone call.
In a recording of a telephone conversation on Saturday with the Secretary of State of the state Brad Raffensperger, which the "Washington Post" published, Trump again sowed doubts about the outcome of the vote.
It is impossible that he "lost in Georgia".
Georgia’s chief electoral officer had previously confirmed Biden’s victory in the November election several times.
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Trump asked his Republican party colleague Raffensperger to recount.
"All I want to do is this: I want to find 11,780 votes," says Trump.
The newspaper interprets this as exerting pressure with the possible aim of election manipulation.
Because Trump also vaguely threatens Raffensperger that the Secretary of State is committing a crime.
“It's a big risk,” he claims.
Why the runoff election to the Senate is so important
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Raffensperger holds against it in the recording.
"The problem you have is that the data you have is wrong," the state home secretary said.
“We have to stand by our numbers.
We believe our numbers are correct. ”Raffensperger pointed out that the results would have passed in court.
The Washington Post article stated that Trump's “rambling and sometimes incoherent conversation” showed how “obsessed and desperate” the president was in the face of his electoral defeat.
In Georgia, runoff elections for two Senate seats will also take place on Tuesday, the result of which could overturn the majority of Republicans in the Washington House of Parliament.
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As things stand, the Republicans have 50 seats in the Senate and the Democrats 48. The Republicans in Georgia only have to win one of the two elections to continue to have a majority in the powerful Congress Chamber.
If the Democrats win both seats, there will be a stalemate in the Senate - and in the event of a vote, the future Vice President Kamala Harris, who by virtue of her office is also Senate President, has the decisive factor with her vote.
Fact check on Trump's controversial Georgia phone call
The AP news agency has checked Trump's statements from the phone call for truthfulness:
Trump
: "If we can go through a few numbers: I think it's pretty clear that we won.
We won very clearly in Georgia. "
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Fact
: Trump lost to Biden in Georgia, albeit very narrowly.
With almost five million votes cast, the Democrat ultimately had a lead of 11,779 votes.
It was counted three times, one of them by hand.
Only then was the election result officially confirmed.
Republican Raffensperger and other election officials reiterated that they have no evidence of any major fraud that could reverse the outcome of the election.
Trump's camp also filed several lawsuits against the election results, all of which were rejected.
At least one is pending in Georgia.
Trump
: “We have somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 ballots that have been mysteriously thrown on the lists.
Much of it has to do with Fulton County, which has never been verified. "
Fact
: There is nothing mysterious about that.
Trump only describes a completely normal, in no way suspicious and completely legal process of counting votes.
It apparently refers to the high number of postal votes, which were only counted from the night after the election on November 3, and which Biden overtook Trump in the last few meters.
Experts and journalists had pointed out days and weeks before the election that the votes cast directly in the polling stations were often counted more quickly and would tend to favor Trump.
Not least because he himself had repeatedly warned against postal voting fraud.
It was also clear beforehand that the postal votes would fall to a larger proportion of Biden.
Trump
: "We think ... if there were real signature checks in Fulton County, you'd find at least a few hundred thousand forged signatures."
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Fact
: The numbers alone are wrong.
Fulton County, the district with the largest population in Georgia, received around 147,000 postal votes, which voters put in envelopes and signed.
About 116,000 of them went to Biden.
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Trump
: "There were no Republican election observers ... and there was no police ... there were lots of ballots.
They weren't in an official ballot box, they were in what looked like suitcases or boxes ... At least 18,000 votes, all for Biden. "
Fact
: Trump continues to hold on to an accusation that has long since been invalidated.
He is referring to a surveillance video from Fulton County that, according to the Trump camp, shows several people counting and pulling suitcases from under their desks after Republican election observers have been sent home.
In fact, they weren't suitcases, but the normal containers with rolls that were used to store the ballot papers and that had previously been filled in the normal way.
Independent election observers and an investigator monitored the entire census, according to the responsible election commission.
In fact, some of the counters left early, but only because they thought it was time to go.
Those who stayed behind kept counting.