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Salon
Salon
Politics
Alex Henderson

GOPer who won 3.4% cries voter fraud

Getty/Kena Betancur

In Georgia's 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary, one of the candidates was even more extreme than former Sen. David Perdue: Christian nationalist and far-right conspiracy theorist Kandiss Taylor, whose campaign theme was "Jesus, guns and babies." Taylor campaigned on ridding Georgia's government of Satanic influence, winning only 3.4 percent of the vote when the primary was held on May 24. But Taylor, in true MAGA fashion, is claiming that the election results are false — and in order to prove it, she is asking Georgia residents to sign notarized affidavits saying that they voted for her.

The primary was a humiliation for former President Donald Trump and a colossal victory for incumbent Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who defeated Perdue by 52 percent. Perdue, endorsed by Trump, campaigned on the Big Lie, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and slamming Kemp for acknowledging that now-President Joe Biden legitimately won in Georgia.

But after his loss, Perdue wasted no time congratulating Kemp — and he is now urging Georgia Republicans to vote for the conservative Georgia governor, who is competing with Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams in the general election. Kemp narrowly defeated Abrams in Georgia's gubernatorial election of 2018.

At least Perdue won 21 percent of the vote compared to only 3.4 percent for Taylor. Regardless, Taylor has refused to concede and is claiming that she really won a lot more votes. In a video, Taylor tells her supporters, "I need you to do an affidavit and say that you voted for her, because she's standing up to the establishment — and we're going to prove that she got hundreds of thousands of votes because we know she did."

According to the Associated Press, Kemp had received at least 885,551 votes in the primary after 99 percent of the vote had been counted — compared to 261,706 for Perdue and 41,109 for Taylor, who is insisting that those numbers are false and that she is a victim of election fraud.

"They actually were trying to make me look stupid," Taylor says in the video. "And it's going to come back to bite them because we're going to have way more than that in affidavits to show that we have more votes than that…. (God) will outsmart crooks every single time. This is His idea."

In another post-election video, Taylor declared, "I do not concede. I do not. And if the people who did this and cheated are watching, I do not concede. And the people of Georgia will not allow me to…. I want you to feel, inside of your gut, a righteous anger for justice. I want you to pray specifically for dark to be brought to light, for justice for the state of Georgia. And anyone who has helped contribute to this crime, to this travesty…. I want you to pray that they feel so guilty, they come forward."

Taylor's campaign was endorsed by MAGA conspiracy theorists who include MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and QAnon supporter Lauren Witzke, the Delaware Republican who suffered a landslide defeat when she ran against Democratic Sen. Chris Coons in 2020.

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