Sitting at his workbench at the back of the shop where he repairs leather goods and sells cowboy hats and Confederate flags, Paul Coffey, 84, firmly believes Donald Trump has won Georgia, despite the official result.
But even if he believes that there was fraud, there is no question, like many Republicans here in Dalton, where the American president is giving a big meeting in the evening, not to vote for his party in the double election. decisive senatorial on Tuesday.
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“I think he won Georgia. If it had been done legally ... I think a lot of people came from elsewhere to vote in Georgia, ”
said this former air traffic controller.
No your protest, just the facts ... or rather those rehashed by Donald Trump.
But
“it is important to vote”
for Republican senators, he insists.
“You have to try,”
adds Cammie Slaughter, 38, a stay-at-home mom who likes to help Paul Coffey in his shop on the main street of Dalton, a neat little town.
She too has already voted - republican - she explains, piercing leather straps in this workshop located not far from a red brick distillery, witness that neighboring Tennessee is not far.
Located in rural northwest Georgia, the region is a conservative stronghold.
For Paul Coffey and Cammie Slaughter, the stakes are too high: control of the US Senate and with it, the balance of power in Washington once Democrat Joe Biden succeeds Donald Trump on January 20.
Two Republican senators play their seats on Tuesday: Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff hope to beat them and thus tip the Senate into their party's fold.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump are in person to campaign in Georgia on Monday to mobilize their constituents.
But the unfounded accusations of electoral fraud hammered by the Republican billionaire could discourage certain voters from voting and thus participate in this same system which he describes as
“illegitimate”
.
A risk for the Republicans in a ballot that promises to be very tight.
"I have heard this a lot and I encourage people to go there, it is very important"
to vote even in case of fraud, because it could allow
"to reveal it later"
, explains Connie Stephens, brought in family listen to Kelly Loeffler in the small town of Cartersville, an hour south of Dalton on the way to Atlanta, the state capital.
Trump "won"
"I came to support the Republican Party, because of all the electoral fraud (...) and to keep the Democrats out"
of the Senate, confides this smiling 53-year-old woman.
She will vote in person on Tuesday.
No question of trusting the early voting system.
Georgia Republican officials released the results giving Joe Biden the winner.
These ballots were counted, recounted, the appeals of the Trump camp were rejected one by one by the courts.
But for many supporters of Donald Trump, there is no doubt: it is these Republican officials who are
“corrupt”
, explains Kimberly Hauri, who came from Atlanta to see Donald Trump in Dalton.
"The fraud is obvious, there are torrents of clues," she
says, approaching the small airport where the meeting is taking place, the last of the Trump presidency.
"And it is Georgia's corrupt rulers who are causing the problem."
She too is convinced that Donald Trump won the ballot in Georgia and the presidential election.
But despite the risk of "fraud", she will vote again Tuesday, as always since she was 18, for the Republican senators.
“Because I believe in freedom, and I don't believe in socialism,”
explains the 50-year-old accountant, with a silver Trump badge on the sweater.
The recording of Donald Trump that scandalizes Washington?
She says she hasn't had the chance to hear it.
And how does she feel about the real estate mogul leaving the White House on January 20?
“You know what, I think he shouldn't do it.
He won."
