Tenney Hosts Election Integrity Forum with MTG, State Officials: ‘We Want People to Vent’ and Be Heard

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) held an election integrity discussion Tuesday evening that turned tense when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) lashed out at a Georgia election official.

The moment between Greene and Georgia Secretary of State COO Gabe Sterling encapsulated a broader narrative about voting concerns that Tenney, cochair of the Election Integrity Caucus, said was a driving reason behind the caucus’s creation.

“She’s upset, but I think that I understand. We want people to vent people. We want people to hear,” Tenney told Breitbart News after the event, noting it was “perfectly legitimate” for people to raise questions and concerns about election matters.

The discussion, hosted by the caucus and the House Administration Committee, featured Sterling, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and South Carolina Election Commission Executive Director Howard Knapp, as well as Tenney, Greene, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), and Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL).

Greene appeared only briefly at the hour and a half-long event, but the roundtable became heated the moment the Georgia Republican sat down next to Sterling.

“In Georgia we had so many problems. We had dead voters,” Greene began before Sterling shot back, “No you didn’t.”

Greene, who represents a solid red rural area of northwest Georgia, then went on a tirade, largely directed at Sterling, which she later shared on social media.

The congresswoman repeated numerous claims she and others, including former President Donald Trump and his supporters, have frequently made since the 2020 election. Concerns about the election that year had spawned largely from dramatic changes in election procedures, especially with mail-in and absentee voting, largely due to Democrats’ contentions about coronavirus.

Greene’s claims included that there was “blatant, outright fraud in the 2020 election,” “Trump won Georgia,” there were “thousands of dead voters in Georgia” (Sterling interjected “there were four”), and the state saw “the whole catastrophe of suitcases coming out from under the table, videos of them rescanning stacks of ballots.”

Greene departed right after the outburst, but not before telling Sterling, “I think you did a horrific job for the state of Georgia.”

Sterling continued on with the election discussion unfazed and made light of the moment on social media later, indicating Greene’s grievances were “disproven conspiracies.”

I had a discussion with the Election Integrity Caucus. A big part of that is talking truthfully about the challenges in elections and identifying REAL issues. Some still deal in disproven conspiracies. It’s a challenge we all face, but having a @CocaCola makes everything better. pic.twitter.com/fzNOVZZOxh

— Gabriel Sterling (@GabrielSterling) March 1, 2023

In reference to Greene’s remarks, LaRose began to tell the others at the table “the strong feelings that you just saw—” before Lee finished his thought: “are all over America.”

“Probably 30 percent of my district … they don’t believe anything,” Tenney said. “A lot of them don’t want to vote. That’s part of the mission of the caucus is to get over that and turn away from anecdotes and to actual facts.”

Tenney launched the caucus after winning her race in 2020 by a razor-thin margin of just over a hundred votes in an election that was rife with problems and legal involvement for months after it ended.

The caucus now works on model legislation and messaging to make sure members and Republican voters know “what’s real and what’s conspiracy theory,” Tenney said.

“We do everything we can to set the record straight. We get involved with all the different groups around the country to try to make sure we know what’s happening,” she said.

The election officials at the roundtable delved into what was working and what was not in their states regarding voter ID, signature verification, voter registration, managing voter databases, voting deadlines, election law enforcement, and more.

After Greene’s comments, LaRose also pointed to a “silver lining” in seeing “high emotions” from Americans about elections.

“I’ve served in a lot of third world countries. I’ve been to a lot of places where people don’t invest any emotions in their elections because they know it’s not going to make a bit of difference anyway,” he said. “The fact that Americans on both sides of the aisle still get viscerally excited about election integrity or voter suppression or any of those kinds of things is a sign that we still believe in this institution as a way to confer consent of the governed.”

Tenney added, “I know Marjorie speaks for a lot of people that say that there’s a lot of issues, but you know, look, I think you’re never going to have a perfect election. I remember my grandmother telling me that Kennedy stole the election.”

Tenney told Breitbart News after the event that Greene texted her an apology for losing her temper.

“Honestly, I hear it every day,” Tenney said. “I go out into conservative areas and everyone thinks the election was stolen, and I go into other areas and people don’t, and I know a lot of people that know that there’s irregularities but they’re not sure how much is true or how much to believe.”

The New York Republican said she planned to sit down with Greene in the future to run through her claims, noting “a lot of people” feel the way Greene does.