GOP gubernatorial hopeful Perdue doubles down on 2020 election fraud claims in exclusive interview

JACKSONVILLE — Georgia voters will head to the polls on Tuesday in a primary election.

The race in the nation’s spotlight is the Republican gubernatorial contest between incumbent Brian Kemp and former U.S. Sen. David Perdue.

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Action News Jax sat down with Perdue for a one-on-one interview ahead of the race.

When it comes to policies, both candidates are fairly similar.

They both support the constitutional carry law enacted in Georgia earlier this year and they’re both pro-life.

The big split comes down to their view of the 2020 election.

Trump-endorsed gubernatorial hopeful David Perdue went on the attack against his primary opponent in our interview Wednesday.

“He allowed the Democrats to basically commit fraud in Georgia,” said Perdue.

During our nearly 20-minute conversation, Perdue repeatedly claimed there was significant fraud in the 2020 election, despite Georgia’s secretary of state having maintained the exact opposite.

In fact, there’s been no substantiated evidence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election.

Perdue has held his position since the 2020 election, even at one point questioning the results of his own failed reelection bid for the U.S. Senate.

We asked Perdue whether he felt his rhetoric around the 2020 election would discourage voters from participating in the 2022 election.

“We know what happens if we don’t vote. Right now, I have people telling me they’ll crawl across a room of broken glass if they have to, to vote,” said Perdue.

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Despite Perdue’s endorsement from former President Trump, polling shows him more than 20 points behind Kemp.

The Trump endorsement has yielded mixed results in primaries around the country. However, Perdue is banking on new voters to push him over the top in Georgia.

“Half the people who’ve voted in this election so far did not vote in the 2018 primaries so they would not be included in any of the polls that we’re talking about. These are the very people that are upset about the election,” said Perdue.

As far as why he believes he’s best positioned to take on likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, Perdue asserts Kemp’s stance on the 2020 election has divided the party.

“This is why the governor has divided the state. There are a lot of people who want that fixed and the governor has denied any wrongdoing, denied anything happened and in a debate, he said, well I never said it was a clean election, we’ve always had fraud in our elections. So, a lot of people are really upset about that,” said Perdue.

Governor Kemp did push for and sign into law new election restrictions in the wake of the 2020 election.

However, Perdue wants to go further.

He told us that as governor, he would establish an election integrity unit to investigate election crimes, similar to the one established in Florida earlier this year.

We did reach out to Kemp’s campaign Wednesday with a list of questions and offered an opportunity for the governor to do an interview with us, but we did not hear back.

That invitation remains open.

Politi­cians at all levels of govern­ment have repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elec­tions were marred by large numbers of people voting illeg­ally. However, extens­ive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter imper­son­a­tion is virtu­ally nonex­ist­ent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or admin­is­trat­ors.

The Bren­nan Center’s seminal report The Truth About Voter Fraud conclus­ively demon­strated that most alleg­a­tions of fraud turn out to be base­less and that most of the few remain­ing alleg­a­tions reveal irreg­u­lar­it­ies and other forms of elec­tion miscon­duct. Numer­ous other stud­ies, includ­ing one commis­sioned by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, have reached the same conclu­sion.

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