Are articles like these conservative plants to disincentivize Democratic voting or is there something here?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/4/trump-election-rhetoric-has-georgia-republicans-concerned
Trump’s election rhetoric has Georgia Republicans concerned
As control of US Senate hinges on upcoming Georgia runoffs, worries grow that Donald Trump’s supporters will not vote.
The Republican Party’s only hope for maintaining a majority in the United States Senate in the first years of Joe Biden’s presidency rests on Georgia runoff elections next month. But a vocal group within the party is undermining that effort by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election.
Hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered on Wednesday for a rally in a park near Atlanta to hear lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, a former member of Trump’s legal team, and called for Georgians to boycott the vote on January 5.
Wood and Powell echoed Trump’s baseless assertions that the November election was rigged and openly discouraged Republican voters from casting ballots again this time around.
“We are not going to allow ourselves to go back in the polling booth,” said Wood at the rally, which was streamed online and viewed by thousands of people, before urging the crowd not to support Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
“They have not earned your vote. Don’t you give it to them? Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?”
He added later: “Maybe it’s time to look beyond the Democrats and the Republicans.”
Powell, who was removed from Trump’s legal team in November, alleged without evidence that the voting machines used in Georgia and dozens of other states were compromised and that Georgians should refuse to vote again next month.
“There should not be a runoff,” she said. “Make it known that you will not vote at all unless your vote is secure.”
The rally highlighted the potentially severe consequences of having a president who constantly undermines the integrity of the US voting system, but who is also a member of a party that is trying to win another election.
“For Republicans, Trump can be a blessing and a curse,” Jessica Taylor, the Senate and Governors editor for the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told Al Jazeera. “You need Trump to get out the base, and he’s been effective at that. They need him to do that. But what is he going to say … He has spent weeks battling the Republican governor and the Republican secretary of state.”
The rally also set off alarm bells for members of the GOP, which is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the state for the elections, and leading members of the party are increasingly calling on people to ignore calls for a boycott and cast their ballots in the runoffs.
“Some have talked about staying home,” Georgia State Representative Vernon Jones, a Republican who is Black, said at the rally.
“I think about Dr Martin Luther King, and I think about all those people in the movement. They were kicked and they were beat and some of them were even killed just to be able to go and vote … You have to come out.”
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