The chairman of the Georgia Republican Party expressed confidence on Tuesday that the state would conduct a fair election and predicted that its outcome would be respected.
The assessment carried special weight in a state that was a focal point of President Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, even as the chairman, Josh McKoon, has continued to cast doubt on Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. McKoon helped advance Republican efforts to reshape election oversight before the 2024 election, championing a new conservative majority on the State Election Board and proposing new voting rules.
On Tuesday, Mr. McKoon said election workers at the polling places he had visited appeared to be conducting an orderly vote. He reserved the right to pursue recounts and examine possible irregularities in extremely close contests, but he said new safeguards were a reason to trust the system.
“I have confidence in that process,” Mr. McKoon, a former state senator and current poll watcher, said in an Election Day interview at the Sandy Springs Library in Fulton County. “I think we’re going to have a fair election.”
“I think everybody’s going to respect the outcome of the election,” he added.
He did not express similar confidence about the 2020 election. Asked about Mr. Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen, Mr. McKoon cited what he said were irregularities and changes to voting procedures that year, saying, “I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to say with certainty what happened with that whole process.”
A statewide hand count of Georgia’s presidential ballots in 2020 confirmed former President Joseph R. Biden’s victory in the state.
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