LIVE: Georgia Secretary of State Holds a News Conference

1, 2, 3, 4. Mic check, mic check. Mic check for all stations, domestic and abroad. 1, 2, 3. Mic check, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4. Check, check, check, check. Good morning, everyone. I find it very interesting with a big crowd today. It's not like we've had an election. This is just the day before. But I'm coming here just to address a few things and take a few questions for all of you. I know that probably the eyes of the nation are probably on Georgia and probably six other states. But tomorrow, good American citizens, people like you and me, are going to be coming from all around the country. They're going to vote and decide who will represent us. But here in Georgia, your neighbors may vote one way, and you may vote for someone else. What we do know is that Governor Kemp, myself, our General Assembly, and tens of thousands of election workers have worked every day to defend every legal vote. In the next few days, you may see some extra drama from fringe activists. They are certainly dramatic, aren't they? Whatever they say or do, we know this to be true. Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. Our systems are secure, and our people are ready. Your local election officials will work around the clock tomorrow to ensure everything runs smoothly. If you're one of the four million voters who have voted early, congratulations. You have made history. But you've also dispelled Stacey Abrams' false narrative that it's hard to vote here in Georgia. That's four million votes, four million voters. This is what we have known this entire time. Georgia has short lines to secure elections four million voters voted without issue. And that is something that we can be proud of as Georgians. If you haven't voted yet, I want you to go to my voter page, the portal that we have at mvp.sos.ga.gov. If you just Google my voter page, Georgia, it'll pop right up. And then you can look up your specific precinct. And that's important because tomorrow you have to vote in your precinct up until 5 p.m. tomorrow. All eyes are on Georgia once again. And just like our Georgia Bulldogs, Go Dogs, that was a great comeback, wasn't it? You guys were, some of you doubted. I know you did. But anyway, when I was doubting, I just called Gabe. And Gabe said, we got it in the bag. So we did there, and we will have an elections. We're looking forward to the election tomorrow because this is the time that we've been waiting for. And it all comes together where you, the voters, get to choose who your leaders will be up and down the ballot from president, state rep, state senator, county commissioners, sheriffs, and local elections. So have fun, enjoy the process. And tomorrow, lines have to be shorter than one hour, and we will be tracking it. I don't know if we have any questions here. We certainly have lots of people. I see one right there. Are you talking about the RNC lawsuit in the Southern District? Right now, we're just waiting, let that work its way through the court system. But we'll follow the law, and that's what we always do. Well, I haven't spoken to him, but if you're referring to, I guess, Fort Wayne County specifically, what I will say is our policy has been, we like to know what the rules are up front. We like to have people have consistency. And Gwinnett County was receiving absentee ballots. They had people at their offices, but they had made that decision back in July. And Fulton's was relatively late. And I think that's not really helpful because then people have to respond to that. And so I think it caught some people unaware. So I do think that having notice and making sure it's always timely, I think is always better, particularly when we live in a polarized society. Well, the judge has already ruled, and he said, yes, it was. And he quoted the code specifically in his ruling on Saturday morning. So to that. And as I've always said, notice is always good. That way people would be prepared, wouldn't have caught them unawares. Gwinnett did give notice back in July, and I think that was the appropriate course to do. When you don't give people notice, it just catches them unaware and is a mad scramble and just a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Well, that's all before the court, and I'll let the judges do what they do, and I'll let the lawyers do what they do. We always defend the law and the Constitution. Well, I know in Georgia, we're gonna have a free, fair, and fast election. I'm really excited about our process because tomorrow night, all these people that have voted early, that's about 65% expected votes, will be reported when our footholds close. All the absentee ballots that have come in will have been ready for tabulation, and those will be reported. That's 70% that will be reported by 8 p.m., plus or minus, assuming polls all close at 7 in those counties, and that really will give you a great path of what you can expect for that date. What we've shown, we have photo ID for all forms of voting. I've done two citizenship checks. I've done an audit about two years ago, and I did one this past summer, proving that only American citizens got voter rolls. We found 20 Americans in this last audit. They were kicked off the voter rolls, and we sent that information to local DAs for prosecution. We have the cleanest voter list in the entire country. We have photo ID for all forms of voting. At the end of the day, it's going to be fair and fast and accurate. I can't control other people. I can control what we do, and we're going to do a great job. Thanks. Well, it depends what you're out there. If you spend a lot of time on social media, you know, you're going to get one opinion, but most people are out there today, right now, working their jobs, trying to put food on their table. Yes, sir. Well, I think when voters go to vote, what, first of all, they're finding is that we started this in 2022, but the electronic poll pad check-in, you know, people are getting checked in so quickly, so that really moves the lines really quick. Lines have to be shorter than one hour on Election Day. I think that's really important, also. And then, so you're having just a lot of people moving through, enjoying the process because they don't have long lines, and so we get the results posted very quickly. As it relates to disinformation, there was something reported last week about some person purported to be some Haitian. He had two driver's licenses. It was all made up, and it actually came from Russia. And so I think we, as Americans, we just need to sit back some time and make sure that you're really hearing the truth because there's a lot of bad people out there that want to just kind of get us fighting amongst ourselves. We know who they are. We know Russia, China, Iran. There's a list of them. It's a basket full, and they're just not really our friends. And if they can create us fighting amongst each other, then they feel like they've won. And so, really, please check it out, and that's why we got back that night and put it out the next day. The federal authorities did confirm it came from Russia. Well, thank you very much. Pardon me? For tomorrow? Well, it's tough to say because hopefully we have some really strong turnout. I checked the weather. There's no reason why voters can't show up, and so we should be well north of 1 million. Back in 2020, we still were coming through near the end of the pandemic, and we had about less than 800,000 show up. We were expecting about 1.1, so take it from there, but we'll see who shows up. But we just hopefully encourage everyone, if you want your voice heard and you haven't voted yet and you are registered, come out to vote. This is your opportunity. Thank you very much.