Lindsey Graham Labeled A ‘Disgrace’ After Election Gaffes

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has no place on Capitol Hill, critics said after a series of apparent missteps in disputes over the outcome of the presidential election.

Graham on Tuesday said he expressed his concerns over mail-in ballots with officials in Arizona and Nevada, one day after an election official in Georgia suggested the senator asked him to throw out some legally cast mail-in ballots in that state. The White House has tried to litigate the results of those contests to no avail.

A narrow victory for President-elect Joe Biden in each of those states helped propel him and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to victory with 306 projected votes in the Electoral College.

Arizona and Georgia were “flipped,” meaning they went against the norm by going for the ticket from the Democratic Party, though Georgia is still hand-counting some ballots.

State officials, meanwhile, said they did not speak with Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. as he had claimed.

Hobbs is the Arizona secretary of state.

“I have not spoken with Senator Lindsey Graham or any other members of Congress regarding the 2020 general election in Nevada or my role in the post-election certification process,” Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said in a statement.

Pressed on the issue, Graham had a difficult time recalling exactly whom he spoke with, according to Politico.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a labor organizer and one-time senate candidate in Texas, said on Twitter that Graham should not serve if he doesn’t believe in the democratic process.

In an apparent reference to the alleged interference in Georgia, others said the senator should be charged with a felony, or at least face hearings in the House Oversight Committee.

Still, another posted an image of an apparent tweet from Graham in 2016 that said then-candidate Donald Trump did the country “a great disservice” by suggesting the election process was rigged.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, carried excerpts from a conversation between Graham and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where Raffensperger is quoted as saying the senator “looked like he was wanting” to get ballots tossed out.

Graham was quoted by the Reuters news service as saying those allegations were “ridiculous.”

Graham, along with the president himself, is among the top-ranking Republicans who have yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 contest. In his own race, he won the contest for Senate in South Carolina with 54.5% of the vote.