Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell is urging Republicans to boycott the Georgia Senate runoffs, even though the party desperately needs the votes

• Former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell told supporters at a Wednesday rally in Alpharetta, Georgia, to boycott state elections until she deems voting systems "secure."
• Powell has filed a legal challenge to the election result in Georgia, baselessly alleging a vast conspiracy to subvert the election by Venezuelan communists using fixed voting machines.
• She did not mention the state's January 2021 Senate runoff vote in her speech, but if Republicans follow her advice in that election, GOP turnout could be depressed.
• Georgia Republicans worry that attacks by Trump and his allies on the state's officials and voting systems will actually endanger their chances of winning the runoffs and retaining control of the Senate.
• At the Wednesday rally, pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood also interrupted a state representative who urged supporters to vote in January, with the lawyer telling them to stay home instead.

The former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell urged supporters at a Wednesday rally to boycott elections until she deems voting systems "secure" — potentially damaging Republican chances of victory in key Senate runoff elections in January.

Powell, with whom the Trump campaign parted ways earlier in November, has launched her own legal challenge to President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Georgia.

She has based her lawsuit on allegations that machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were fixed as part of a communist plot to subvert the election, while providing no convincing evidence to substantiate the claim, and enlisting a key promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory as one of her witnesses.

At the "Stop The Steal" rally in Alpharetta, Georgia, on Wednesday, she said that Republicans and other voters should boycott elections until voting systems are made secure.

"I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure – and I mean that regardless of party," Powell said, according to Fox News. "We can't live in a republic, a free republic unless we know our votes are legal and secure."

She advocated the use of "paper ballots," marked by a thumbprint, and counted by hand.

—Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) December 2, 2020

Georgia, as in most other US states, uses secret ballots, which contain no identifying information about the voter, to ensure the integrity of elections.

Though Powell did not single out the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia — set to be held on January 5, 2021 — if Republicans followed her advice, it could imperil the GOP's chances of winning the elections and retaining control of the Senate.

Though she is no longer a Trump campaign representative, Powell's claims echo President Donald Trump's baseless allegations that victory was stolen from in Georgia as a result of election fraud — claims he repeated in a 45-minute-long video released on Wednesday.

According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein, State Rep. Vernon Jones — a Democrat who endorsed Trump this April — told rallygoers vote in the runoffs, but he was cut off by pro-Trump lawyer attorney Lin Wood, who has also backed the voter-fraud claims.

—Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) December 2, 2020

Wood cut off Jones, telling Republicans to stay at home unless Trump is proclaimed winner in the state.

The campaign to overturn the results of the election in Georgia has pitted Trump and his allies against officials in the president's own party, who have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud in the state.

On Tuesday Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and one of the state's top election officials, pleaded with the president to stop stirring allegations of election fraud, saying that it was "inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence."

Georgia Republicans told The New York Times that they fear the allegations of electoral fraud by Trump and his allies are splitting the party and could depress voter turnout, undermining the chances of Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

At Thursday's rally, protesters reportedly directed chants of "lock him up" at Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, whom Trump attacked on November 29 for using Dominion voting machines in the state.