Perdue wants election police unit in Georgia

Kemp challenger looks to energize Trump backers.

Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue promised Thursday to establish a new police force to investigate election fraud if elected governor of Georgia, marking the Repub- lican’s latest attempt to ener- gize Donald Trump supporters by channeling GOP fury over the 2020 results.

Perdue also said he’d require election results to be “independently audited” before they’re certified, taking a swipe at Gov. Brian Kemp for not delaying the process after the 2020 elec- tions. The governor was bound by law to certify the 2020 election, which ended with a slim victory for Democrat Joe Biden over Trump.

The proposal to create an “Election Law Enforcement Division” in Georgia echoed a plan unveiled this week by Republican Florida Gov. Ron Desantis to establish a first-of-its-kind election police force that has infuriated voting rights advocates.

It’s among a string of proposals by Perdue that have put false claims of election fraud at the center of his primary challenge against Kemp. That approach helped Perdue win support from the former president, who vowed to defeat Kemp after he refused to illegally reverse his election defeat.

“Leave it to a 20-year career politician like Kemp to sit on his hands when we needed him most,” Perdue said Thursday. “He failed us, and Georgians lost confidence that their vote would count.”

State election officials have said there’s no indication of fraud after three ballot counts and multiple investigations. Pro-trump lawsuits seeking to overturn the election were dismissed or withdrawn from courts. Biden defeated Trump by about 12,000 votes in Georgia.

Georgia already has election investigators who looked into hundreds of allegations, debunking almost all of them. Their findings refuted claims of counterfeit ballots, ballot stuffing, dead voters and mismatched signatures on absentee ballot envelopes.

Perdue, who opened his campaign by criticizing Kemp for failing to call a special session to overhaul election laws, said he wouldn’t have certified the state election if he had been governor. He also filed a lawsuit that mirrored debunked claims from a conspiracy theorist.

Kemp spokesman Cody Hall said the proposal amounted to an admission from Perdue that “his entire campaign is a lie.“

”His proposal recognizes that governors have no legal authority in the oversight, administration or investigation of elections under current state law and constitution,” he said.

The winner of the GOP primary will face Democrat Stacey Abrams in November. Abrams, who was narrowly defeated by Kemp in 2018, has mocked the GOP infighting.

It’s not immediately clear how the new police force would operate, but Perdue said it would be designed to investigate election crimes and leave Georgia voters assured that “only legal votes will be counted.”