A new video surfaced today of Rep. Jody Hice, Republican candidate for Secretary of State, acknowledging he wants to use the office of top elections administrator to overturn the will of Georgia voters. In the video, Hice amplified long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and promised that if elected, he would work to retroactively “decertify” the 2020 election results.
“It is absolutely disqualifying that a candidate to oversee our state’s elections admitted that he will use his office to overturn the will of Georgia voters,” said Rebecca Galanti, spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Georgia. “Hice has admitted that Georgia Republicans know they can’t win on ideas, so they’ll resort to rigging the system and subverting our democracy to stay in power. Respecting the will of voters is the bare minimum of the job, and Jody Hice has already proven he is completely unfit for office. The question now is whether Georgia Republicans like Brian Kemp will unequivocally denounce Jody Hice, or continue to let extremists take over their party.”
Hice’s comments confirm what non-partisan elections experts have warned: if Hice becomes Georgia’s next Secretary of State, “there’s a good chance that Georgia’s electoral votes will be pushed into the Republican column in 2024, regardless of the popular vote.”
This is just the latest in a string of dangerous anti-democracy rhetoric and actions from the U.S. representative, who has made spreading lies about the 2020 election the focal point of his campaign for Secretary of State. Hice was also a key player in the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021:
- Hice was at the vile pre-insurrection planning meeting at the White House in December 2020, where Republicans “strategized over a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results.”
- Hice tweeted, “This is our 1776 moment” moments before voting to overturn election results, keeping the tweet promoting violent insurrection up even as the rally outside the Capitol grew violent.
- Hice voted in Congress to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election as rioters gathered at the Capitol, then “sought to invalidate the will of millions of Georgia voters in Congress” hours after the deadly January 6 riot.
- Hice claimed that violent insurrectionists were the real victims of the January 6 riot to overthrow the government – which caused the deaths of several Capitol police officers – while speaking at a 2021 congressional hearing.
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