As President Donald Trump and his campaign continue to contest the results of the 2020 election, a Georgia woman whose vote the Trump campaign alleged was fraudulent because she was dead is now speaking out. Deborah Jean Christiansen, one of several people named by the campaign, is very much alive and is now slamming the president’s accusations as “just ridiculous.”
In an interview with CNN, Christiansen, a retired mental health counselor who had voted for the president in 2016 but voted for President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 election, called the claim “just ridiculous” and was an effort by a “narcissist” president to deny the reality of his defeat. Current election results show that Biden is projected to secure 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. At least 270 electoral votes are required to win the election.
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“The guy lost the election. He should be worried more about taking care of people with this Covid-19 going on. He’s got a pandemic,” Christiansen said. “Come on. Biden won. Let’s move on. Let’s help him transition.”
Since Americans headed to the polls on Election Day, and in the days since numerous outlets called Biden’s election, the Trump campaign has been taking legal action to change the results. Among the accusations of widespread voter fraud that have been made is the allegation that dead people voted in the 2020 election. On Nov. 11, the Trump campaign claimed that four deceased people’s identities were used to vote in Georgia. In a tweet, the Trump War Room wrote, “Mrs. Deborah Jean Christiansen of Roswell, Georgia was registered to vote on October 5. Then she voted in the election. The only problem? She passed away a year and a half ago, in May 2019. Sadly, Mrs. Christiansen is a victim of voter fraud.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeated the allegation and allegations of several other deceased people casting votes.
In Christiansen’s case, her vote was legally cast, as she is a living American. Another person named Deborah Jean Christiansen, had died a year earlier. Cobb County elections director Janine Eveler told CNN notes that while they share a name and were born in the same year and month, they were born on different days and had different Social Security numbers. Eveler also noted the deceased woman “is marked as deceased” in the state’s system. According to Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, director of external affairs in Fulton County, the deceased woman’s voter registration was canceled in 2019. There is no record of someone re-registering in her name or voting in her name in the 2020 election. Eveler said that the Trump campaign “seems to have jumped to an inaccurate conclusion based on partial information.”
Allegations of two other deceased people casting votes have also been debunked. Despite this, the president has maintained the allegation that deceased Americans voted in the election, writing on Twitter as recently as Tuesday, “DEAD PEOPLE VOTED.”
