总统和副总统将前往佐治亚州，为该州的两名参议员主持集会，因为越来越多的共和党人对唐纳德·特朗普总统和一些声称是总统的盟友的言论表示直接和间接的担忧选举被“操纵”可能会抑制共和党的投票率一月份的决选。决胜将决定哪一方控制国会的上议院。

“许多共和党人都是根据特朗普的话来生活和死亡的，所以如果他说这个系统不可信，机器没有正确地记录选票，那么将会有更多的人相信它。合乎逻辑的下一步是，好吧，那为什么还要去投票呢?”佐治亚大学政治学教授、南方政治专家查尔斯·布洛克说。

在乔·拜登被预测为2020年总统选举的获胜者后的近四周内，特朗普拒绝让步。兜售虚假主张以及大规模选举欺诈和投票转换的彻头彻尾的阴谋，尽管支持特朗普连任的共和党当选官员越来越承认特朗普失败了，而且在全国各州20多起诉讼中被驳回的普遍选民欺诈的说法是没有根据的。

但是他在佐治亚州的许多盟友，包括该州共和党主席、参议员凯利·雷夫勒和大卫·濮培德，还没有站出来反对总统驳倒他的错误主张尽管两位参议员都面临着1月5日的另一场选举，这次选举将在相同的程序下使用相同的设备进行，共和党国务卿布拉德·拉芬伯格和他办公室的其他人认为这次选举是公平和准确的为拜登认证和副总统当选人卡玛拉·哈里斯。

彭斯在雷夫勒、濮培德和公共服务委员会候选人布巴·麦克唐纳的集会上担任主角，他也参加了周五下午2:30开始的决选。周六，特朗普将前往佐治亚州，参加由共和党全国委员会主办的与雷夫勒和濮培德的机场机库集会。与副总统不同，特朗普更像是一个通配符。副总统已经在桃州为参议员们竞选，他在赞扬两位参议员的同时，发出了强烈的“退出投票”的信息，并重复了他的竞选演说。

通过盖蒂图像的洛杉矶时报

副总统迈克·彭斯在佐治亚州坎顿的一次集会上向支持者挥手致意。，还有大卫·P·森

“总统的访问甚至可能是决定性的时刻，这取决于他朝哪个方向前进。我敢肯定，候选人自己和其他共和党领导人都在说，“当你去那里的时候，说雷夫勒的好话，说濮培德的好话，告诉那些家伙，你必须要确定，然后出去投票给他们...但是我们知道总统经常不听这些训导员的话——事实上可能通常不听他们的话，”布洛克告诉美国广播公司新闻。

周三，总统在他的推特账户上发表了一篇46分钟的演讲，继续兜售选举错误信息。在他说“可能是他做过的最重要的演讲”的演讲中，特朗普错误地声称，在包括佐治亚州在内的全国许多州用于所有面对面投票的自治领投票系统机器上进行的投票，将特朗普的投票转换为拜登的投票。该公司是一个由州和地方选举官员组成的联盟，该阴谋已被该公司打垮，尤其是在佐治亚州进行审计在总统竞选中，选举官员用手清点每一张选票，发现原来机器清点的结果有所不同，而用手清点的结果只有0.1053%。典型的方差在1%到1.5%之间。

司法部长威廉·巴尔公开被击倒他的老板也声称，周三告诉美联社，司法部和国土安全部“没有看到任何东西来证实”这一说法，“机器的编程本质上是为了扭曲选举结果。”

特朗普发表这番言论前不久，两位支持特朗普的律师林·伍德(Lin Wood)和西德尼·鲍威尔(Sidney Powell)曾在总统竞选法律团队中任职。举行他们所谓的“停止偷窃”集会在亚特兰大北部，他们告诉群众不要在决选中投票。伍德还表示，这两位参议员“没有赢得你的投票”，选民不应该再次为他们投票。

"你为什么要回去在另一场被操纵的选举中投票?"伍德说，戴上一顶红色的MAGA帽子。

鲍威尔火上浇油，说，“不应该有决胜——至少在自治领机器上。”

“停止偷窃”是一个亲特朗普的团体，在2020年大选后迅速出现，其推动因素是对广泛选民欺诈的毫无根据的指控。它由受欢迎的亲特朗普社交媒体活动人士领导，并一直在全国各地组织集会，呼吁推翻选举结果。

“林·伍德和西德尼·鲍威尔是完全破坏性的。每一个关心美国的佐治亚保守派都必须在决选中投票。他们的不投票策略将削弱美国，”发微博周四，前众议院议长、格鲁吉亚人纽特·金里奇。

佐治亚州最著名的共和党政治家之一金里奇可能在推特上敦促共和党选民参与，但就在两周前，他写了一篇专栏文章福克斯新闻声称这次选举是“聚焦于威胁我们自由生存的大规模的选举法欺骗”，并重复了同样的错误阴谋论，即在包括佐治亚州在内的战场州改变投票。它还包括对该州选举过程的其他虚假指控，如本次选举缺席投票的拒绝率明显低于以往的选举。事实上，共和党人把拒绝率混为一谈，将今年因签名而被拒绝的比率与以前的总拒绝率进行比较，后者包括最大一类被拒绝的选票:迟到的选票。

周三，由18名前民选官员和“长期政党活动人士”组成的小组，包括坎普和雷夫勒的前任——前州长内森·迪尔和前参议员约翰尼·伊萨克森——分别给佐治亚州的共和党同僚写了一封公开信，敦促他们继续关注决胜选举，并写道，随着一些共和党人权衡在决胜选举中投票是否重要，他们“越来越担心地观察着”。

他们写道:“我们今天毫不含糊地说，如果11月3日投给特朗普总统和所有共和党候选人的每一票都没有在美国参议院第二轮投票中投出，我们国家和民族的轨迹将在1月5日发生不可挽回的改变。”

虽然签署者没有明确这样做，但这封信暗示，他们担心继续喋喋不休地谈论上次选举——并继续声称这是不公平的——在明年1月不会是一种获胜的策略。他们写道，虽然他们“必须始终采取行动确保选举过程的完整性”，但这种努力不能“分散只有佐治亚州共和党人才能完成的使命:保持对美国参议院的控制”。

埃文·武奇/美联社

12月3日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在白宫椭圆形办公室的仪式上聆听

佐治亚州共和党高级官员杰夫·邓肯(Geoff Duncan)中尉一直很直接，他在多个电视采访中表示，他担心这些错误信息不仅会对共和党在参议院决选中的投票率产生负面影响，还会对共和党的未来产生负面影响，他敦促特朗普和党内其他人“完善他们处理选举后进程的方法”。

“我真正关心的有两个部分。一个是短期和参议院选举，并确保我们不会疏远任何需要为雷夫勒和濮培德参议员露面的选民，”邓肯在周一晚上接受CNN采访时说。"我认为，其次，我们有长期疏远选民的风险."

拉夫森伯格办公室的投票系统实施经理加布里埃尔·斯特林(Gabriel Sterling)周三晚上告诉美国广播公司新闻直播(ABC News Live Prime)主播林西·戴维斯(Linsey Davis)，他希望“在特朗普的敦促下”呼吁老板辞职的雷夫勒和濮培德能够站出来反驳总统的虚假说法，他说，他认为“如果他们表现出一些领导力，他们将获得更多的选票，而不是更少的选票。”

斯特林一直在耐心地回答记者的问题——经常是同一个问题多次——在几乎每天的新闻发布会上，国家进行三票在总统竞选中。但是在星期二下午，他在讲台上释放在佐治亚州议会大厦，当他直接请求总统和两位参议员谴责对选举工作人员的暴力威胁时，他的愤怒溢于言表。

他说，这些威胁来自于对选举毫无根据的指控，他直接指控特朗普，拿着最响的扩音器喷吐着这个令人振奋的故事。

尽管如此，他在美国广播公司新闻直播节目中说，他仍然计划在决选中支持雷夫勒和濮培德，因为作为一名共和党人，他希望看到他的政党保持在参议院的控制权。但是他相信总统已经让雷夫勒和濮培德加入进来难以维持的局面拒绝承认失败。

“他们不想失去特朗普的支持者，但这样做他们将失去另一批支持者，所以这是一个他们和总统都无法摆脱的盒子——他让他们处于这种情况是不公平的。他继续质疑这次选举的结果是不公平的，不仅在佐治亚州，而且在亚利桑那州、密歇根州、威斯康星州和宾夕法尼亚州。没有任何重大阴谋的证据。它就是不存在，”斯特林告诉戴维斯。

面对雷夫勒和濮培德的民主党候选人——分别是拉斐尔·沃诺克牧师和乔恩·奥索夫——还没有考虑到影响共和党的难题，UGA教授布洛克说这个难题“适得其反”

“如果你不知道更多，你会认为这是民主党的阴谋，”他说。

大约在周五彭斯在该州集会的同时，民主党将再次拿出他们不那么秘密的武器，他们的总统候选人自1992年以来首次赢得格鲁吉亚的选举投票。

前总统巴拉克·奥巴马在大选前一天在亚特兰大为民主党人举行了一次驾车集会，他将与参议院候选人、2018年州长候选人和民主党人一起参加一次虚拟集会公平竞赛创始人史黛西·艾布拉姆斯佐治亚州民主党女主席尼克马·威廉姆斯也是该州第五国会选区的当选议员。

伊利亚·新时代/法新社，通过盖蒂图像，文件

前总统巴拉克·奥巴马，身旁是参议院候选人乔恩·奥索夫和拉斐尔·沃诺克

尽管这一具有流行病意识的事件不会真正把格鲁吉亚人带出来，但它将展示民主党的统一战线，这一点很重要，因为民主党需要赢得两个席位，才能控制参议院，哈里斯是决定性的一票。

从历史上看，民主党在佐治亚州的决胜选举中表现不佳，甚至在他们是总候选人的时候就输了。但布洛克表示，特朗普的选举错误信息造成的“共和党内部的潜在深渊”可能有助于改写这一历史。

“民主党方面，看起来是团结一致的...布洛克说:“即使是那些可能更喜欢比民主党候选人走得更远的人的进步人士，尽管如此，他们还是会送钱来，或者如果他们在这个州，他们会准备好出去代表两位民主党人工作，所以民主党人不会犹豫，也不会担心争取他们当选的问题。”

至少有一个名为“真正的美国人”的超级政治行动委员会，试图利用总统的虚假选举主张和他的盟友的呼吁，从根本上抵制决选。支持民主党参议员候选人的泛非大会在佐治亚州发起了一场广告牌运动，遭到了反对迅速的指责来自佐治亚州共和党。

一个广告牌上写着:“濮培德/雷夫勒没有为特朗普送货，不要为他们送货。”。

周四，该组织在推特上公布了下一个广告牌，上面有“停止偷窃”集会上的律师之一伍德的一句话。

“雷夫勒在哪里?濮培德在哪?他们没有赢得你的选票——林·伍德，支持特朗普的律师，”广告牌上写着。

根据政治行动委员会在小额民主党筹款平台ActBlue上的页面，12个广告牌已经竖起，另外7个正在建设中，另外8个已经购买。

Trump, Pence to campaign in Georgia as Senate runoff turnout concerns grow among GOP

The president and vice president are heading to Georgia to headline rallies for the state's two senators as a growing number of Republicans express direct and indirect concerns that rhetoric coming from President Donald Trump and some allies claiming the presidentialelectionwas "rigged"could suppress GOP turnoutfor the runoff election in January. The runoffwill determine which partycontrols Congress' upper chamber.

"So many Republicans live and die by what Trump says, and so if he says that the system's not to be trusted, the machines aren't registering the votes properly, then that'll increase the number of people who will believe it. And the logical next step is, OK, so why bother to go vote?" said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia and an expert in Southern politics.

In the nearly four weeks since Joe Biden was projected to be the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Trump has refused to concede,peddling false claimsand outright conspiracies of mass election fraud and voting switching, even as Republican elected officials who supported his reelection increasingly acknowledge that Trump lost, and that claims of widespread voter fraud that have been rejected in more than two dozen lawsuits in battleground states across the country are without merit.

But many of his allies in Georgia, including the state Republican Party's chairman and Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, have yet to come out against the president orknock down his false claims, even though both senators are facing another election on Jan. 5 that will be conducted under the same procedures and using the same equipment -- an election that Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and others in his office have defended as fair and accurate andcertified for Bidenand Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Pence is headlining a rally for Loeffler, Perdue and Public Service Commission candidate Bubba McDonald, who is also competing in the runoff, that starts at 2:30 p.m. Friday. On Saturday, Trump will travel to Georgia for an airport hangar rally with Loeffler and Perdue, hosted by the Republican National Committee. Unlike the vice president, who has already campaigned in the Peach State for the senators, pushing a strong "get out the vote" message while praising the two senators and recycling his campaign stump speech, Trump is more of a wildcard.

"The president's visit could even be the decisive moment depending on which direction he goes. I'm sure the candidates themselves and other Republican leaders are saying, "When you go down there, talk up Loeffler, talk up Perdue, tell those guys, you gotta be sure and go out and vote for them ... but we know that the president often doesn't listen to these handlers -- indeed maybe usually doesn't listen to them," Bullock told ABC News.

The president continued peddling election misinformation in a 46-minute speech that was posted on his Twitter account on Wednesday. In the speech he said "may be the most important speech (he's) ever made," Trump falsely claimed that votes cast on Dominion Voting Systems machines, which are used in many states across the county, including in Georgia for all in-person voting, switched votes cast for Trump to votes cast for Biden. The conspiracy has been shot down by the company, a coalition of state and local election officials, and specifically in Georgia by the stateconducting an auditof the presidential contest, which consisted of election officials counting -- by hand -- every single ballot cast in the race and found a variation of the original machine-counted results and the hand counted results was just 0.1053%. A typical variance is between 1% and 1.5%.

Attorney General William Barrpublicly knocked downhis boss' claim, as well, telling The Associated Press Wednesday that both the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security "haven't seen anything to substantiate" the claim that "machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results."

Trump's remarks came not long after two Trump-supporting attorneys, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, who was once on the president's campaign legal team,held what they called a "Stop the Steal" rallynorth of Atlanta where they told the crowd to not vote in the runoff. Wood also said the two senators "have not earned your vote" and voters shouldn't turn out again to cast ballots for them.

"Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?" Wood said, donning a red MAGA hat.

Powell, adding fuel to the fire, said, "There should not be a runoff -- at least on Dominion machines."

"Stop the Steal" is a pro-Trump group that quickly emerged following the 2020 election fueled by baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. It's led by popular pro-Trump social media activists and has been organizing rallies across the country calling for the results to be overturned.

"Lin Wood and Sidney Powell are totally destructive. Every Georgia conservative who cares about America MUST vote in the runoff. Their dont (sic) vote strategy will cripple America,"tweetedformer Speaker of the House and Georgian Newt Gingrich on Thursday.

Gingrich, one of the most prominent Republican politicians from Georgia, may have come to Twitter to urge GOP voter participation, but it was just over two weeks ago when hepenned an op-edfor Fox News claiming this election was "focusing a spotlight on election law cheating on a scale which threatens the survival of our freedoms," and repeating the same false conspiracy theory about vote switching in battleground states, including Georgia. It also included other false claims about the state's process, such as that the rejection rate for absentee ballots for this election was suspiciously lower than previous elections. In actuality, Republicans have conflated rejection rates, comparing this year's rejection rate because of signatures only to previous total rejection rates, which include the biggest category of rejected ballots: the ones that arrive late.

On Wednesday, a group of 18 former elected officials and "longtime party activists," including Kemp and Loeffler's predecessors -- former Gov. Nathan Deal and former Sen. Johnny Isakson, respectively -- penned an open letter to their fellow Georgia Republicans urging them to stay focused on the runoffs and writing that they've "watched with increasing concern" as some Republicans weigh whether voting in the runoff election matters at all.

"We say today, without equivocation, that without every vote cast for President Trump and all our Republican candidates on November 3 also being cast in the U.S. Senate runoffs, the trajectory of our State and Nation will be irreparably altered on January 5th," they wrote.

While the signatories did not do so explicitly, the letter implies they're worried that continuing to harp on the last election -- and continuing to claim it was unfair -- will not be a winning tactic come January. They wrote that while they "must always act to ensure the integrity of the elections process," that effort can't "detract from a mission that only Georgia Republicans can accomplish: maintaining control of the U.S. Senate."

Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a top Republican state official in Georgia, has been direct, saying in multiple television interviews that he worries the misinformation will not just negatively impact GOP turnout in the Senate runoff, but also the Republican Party down the road, urging Trump and others in the party "to refine their approach to how we handle this post-election process."

"There's two parts that really are concerning to me. One is the short term and the Senate election, and making sure we don't alienate any voters that we need to show up for Sen. Loeffler and Sen. Perdue," Duncan said in a CNN interview Monday night. "And I think, secondly, we run the risk of alienating voters longer term."

Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager in Raffensperger's office, told ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis Wednesday night that he wishes Loeffler and Perdue -- who both called for his boss' resignation "at Trump's urging," according to Sterling -- would come out and dispute the president's false claims, saying he thinks that "if they showed some leadership, they would get more votes, rather than less."

Sterling has been patiently answering reporters' questions -- often the same question multiple times -- in near-daily press conferences as the state conductedthree counts of the votesin the presidential race. But on Tuesday afternoon, heunleashed at the podiumin the Georgia State Capitol, his anger palpable as he made direct pleas to the president and both senators to condemn violent threats against election workers.

He said these threats have been born out of the troves of unsubstantiated claims about the election, which hedirectly accused Trump, the holder of the loudest megaphone spewing this narrative, of inspiring.

Even so, he said on ABC News Live Prime that he still plans to support Loeffler and Perdue in the runoff because, as a Republican, he wants to see his party maintain control in the Senate. But he believes the president has put Loeffler and Perdue inan untenable situationby refusing to admit that he lost.

"They don't want to lose the Trump supporters, but by acting this way they're going to lose another chunk of supporters, and so it's a box they can't get out of and the president -- it was unfair of him to put them in the situation. It's unfair of him to continue to question the outcome of this election, not just in Georgia, but in Arizona and Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. There is no proof of any vast conspiracy. It's just not there," Sterling told Davis.

The Democratic candidates facing Loeffler and Perdue -- Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively -- haven't weighed in on the conundrum impacting the GOP, which UGA professor Bullock said is "so counterproductive."

"If you didn't know better, you'd think it was a Democratic plot," he said.

Around the same time as Pence's rally in the state Friday, the Democratic Party, riding high off their presidential candidate winning Georgia's electoral votes for the first time since 1992, will whip out their not-so-secret weapon once more.

Former President Barack Obama, who headlined a drive-in rally for the Democrats in Atlanta the day before the general election, will participate in a virtual rally with both Senate candidates, 2018 gubernatorial candidate andFair Fight founder Stacey Abramsand Democratic Party of Georgia Chairwoman Nikema Williams, who is also the congresswoman-elect for the state's 5th Congressional District.

While the pandemic-conscious event won't physically bring Georgians out, it will showcase Democrats' unified front, which is important because Democrats need to win both seats in order to control the Senate with Harris as the tie-breaking vote.

Historically, Democrats have done poorly in runoffs in Georgia, even losing when they were the leading candidate in the general. But Bullock said that the "potential abyss within the Republican Party" caused by Trump's election misinformation could help rewrite that history.

"The Democratic side, it looks like it is united ... even progressives who might prefer someone further left than either the Democratic candidates, nonetheless are sending in money, or if they're here in state, (are) ready to go out and work on behalf of the two Democrats, so there's no hesitancy on the part of the Democrats, no concerns about problems in trying to secure their election," Bullock said.

There is at least one super PAC, called Really American, that is trying to capitalize on the president's false election claims and calls from his allies to essentially boycott the runoff. The PAC, which is supporting the Democratic Senate candidates, launched a billboard campaign in Georgia that was met withswift rebukefrom the Georgia GOP.

"Perdue/Loeffler Didn't Deliver For Trump, DON'T Deliver For Them," one billboard reads.

On Twitter Thursday, the group unveiled its next billboard, which features a quote from Wood, one of the lawyers at the "Stop the Steal" rally.

"Where's Loeffler? Where's Perdue? They have not earned your vote -- Lin Wood, pro-Trump Lawyer," the billboard reads.

According to the PAC's page on small-dollar Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, 12 billboards are already up, another seven are currently being built and eight more have been purchased.