Blame Rudy Giuliani.

That was the message from Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s Republican Lt. Governor, when asked about the impetus for Georgia’s controversial new voting law (watch above).

Appearing on CNN’s New Day, Duncan said that the legislation “started to gain momentum in the legislature…when Rudy Giuliani showed up in a couple of committee rooms and spent hours spreading misinformation and sowing doubt across, you know, hours of testimony.”

In December, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer testified that thousands of dead and ineligible Georgians voted and that the state’s voting machines had been hacked to give Joe Biden an advantage. Even a modicum of scrutiny reveals that Giuliani’s claims are false and Georgia recounted their ballots three times to ensure their legitimacy. The recounts were supervised by Republican elected officials and Georgia lawmakers eventually refused Giuliani’s request to throw out the results of the 2020 vote.

Biden, of course, won Georgia and the presidency. Trump and his allies have used specious conspiracy theories to convince a large chunk of the Republican party that Biden’s win was stolen. Giuliani and several other Trump enablers are being sued for defamation by the companies behind Georgia’s voting machines. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

Yet, Georgia legislators have cited the need to restore faith in the state’s electoral process as the motivation behind a new law that restricts the use of ballot boxes, makes it more difficult to obtain an absentee ballot, and makes it a crime to give voters waiting in line food or water. Voting rights advocates say the law is designed to curb the Black vote in Georgia, making it more difficult for Democrats to compete there. 

The law also stripped the secretary of state of his chairmanship of the Georgia State Election Board. In December, Giuliani said the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was engaged in “an unlawful cover up.” Raffensperger resisted Trump’s explicit requests to find votes for him. Now he’s powerless to stop such a request in the future.

Duncan expressed ambivalence about the new law, but took exception to the reduced role for the Georgia secretary of state, saying “But some of the punitive, you know, responses to taking Raffensperger off that elections board was just trying to tip their hat to Donald Trump, and I just didn’t think that was a necessary step.”