News from Georgia.

And he sounded more like an Attorney General when he pointed to the rule of law as the most essential element in the American democratic process.

“Now I’ve lived it and I can tell you it’s very important to the very fabric of society and us as Americans,” he said. “When the time came to choose I had to make a decision. And I came down on the side of the rule of law.”

He said he also understood that other Republicans were surprised and disappointed when the votes were counted in 2020.

“But we can’t let making the right call to defend the Republic be punished…for doing their jobs, basically following the law, following the process.”

The state’s chief elections officer also defended Senate Bill 202, the state’s new election law, specifically the new absentee voter ID requirements, which he called objective instead of subjective, and the move to shorten the state’s previous nine-week runoff process.

“Why are we changing? To help restore confidence, wherever we can shore up confidence, because this thing didn’t just happen in 2020. It happened in 2018 and goes back to 2016 when Donald Trump talked about ‘Russian collusion.’”