Georgia Secretary of State Blocks Caller After Receiving Unhinged Threats

By Andy Borowitz

January 4, 2021

Photograph by Erik S. Lesser / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

ATLANTA (The Borowitz Report)—Georgia’s secretary of state has blocked the number of a desperate caller who phoned him on Saturday with a series of unhinged threats.

Brad Raffensperger said that he stayed on the line with the caller for approximately an hour “in the hopes of talking him down.”

“He really seemed to be in distress,” Raffensperger said. “I thought that if I spoke to him in a calm, soothing voice, that might help him feel better, but nothing I said made any difference.”

“He was spouting all sorts of nutty conspiracy theories about dead people,” he added. “It seemed like he spent a lot of time on Twitter.”

After it became clear that the caller was “not in touch with reality,” the secretary of state ended the call and blocked the man’s number.

“I felt bad about that, but there was nothing more I could do,” Raffensperger said. “I just hope he gets the help he needs.”

Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.