By Vernon Jones

When President Donald Trump began his first campaign in 2015, he ran on one simple but genius phrase: “Make America Great Again.” MAGA encapsulated the idea of a prosperous future that President Trump envisioned for our great nation.

In one simple phrase, President Trump let our nation know that he would always put America first. He would bring jobs back to America, secure our borders, rebuild our military, ensure peace through strength, defend our police, and enact fair trade deals that benefit our own citizens. And he did. President Trump fulfilled all his promises in only one short term. But that’s exactly what MAGA is about — building and creating a future through commonsense policies so that everyone can achieve the American dream.

Every Republican running for office right now should keep that in mind. You’re either for the American people, or you are against us. MAGA is rightfully the future of the Republican Party and the future of our great nation. In fact, it should be a litmus test for every single candidate running for office. You have no business running for office if you have no interest in representing the American people. One Republican governor certainly understands that.

We need more leaders like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has fully embraced the MAGA movement. Governor DeSantis rejuvenated the Florida economy and protected the interests of his state throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. And his constituents know it. His MAGA approach to governing is generating support for him and the people he represents.

If I succeed in my campaign to unseat the current governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, I will follow in President Trump’s footsteps and fight to my last breath representing the people of Georgia, just like Governor DeSantis has for his constituents in Florida. As I have said before, we don’t need people who govern like Mitt Romney or Kemp. We need people who will govern like President Trump and Governor DeSantis. We need elected leaders who will carry the torch of the MAGA movement forward to ensure a bright and brilliant future for the next great generation of Americans.

Let’s face it, no one can deny the results of the MAGA movement. In four short years, President Trump led our nation to having the unimaginable record-low unemployment rate of 3.5%. He cleared the way for employers to add millions of jobs to the economy in his first few years in office, and he even fought tooth and nail to ensure our corporations bring their manufacturing plants back to the United States. More than 1.2 million manufacturing and construction jobs did come back to the U.S. under his bold leadership. That’s the same success I will bring to Georgia, and it should be the same success that all politicians running for office should hope to achieve for their constituents.

In 2020, Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists used the ChiCom Virus pandemic to implement their bulk-mail ballot fraud, destroying the integrity of our election under the guise of “public safety.” And they will continue to push their HR 1 so-called “voter rights” bill even though it will not pass the Senate.

In my state of Georgia, we still don’t know where hundreds of thousands of ballots originated.

The Georgia Star reports that “officials at the state and county level in Georgia have failed to produce chain of custody records for more than 333,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes located around the state” from the 2020 presidential election. Those ballots had the potential to sway the state’s election either way considering that President Joe Biden won Georgia with fewer than 12,000 votes. All MAGA candidates running for office should support statewide forensic audits for their respective states, and they should also support legislation to ensure the security of our elections moving forward. If we don’t know the origins of hundreds of thousands of ballots in Georgia, then that is likely also the case in other states throughout the country.

We must figure out what went wrong in the 2020 election and ensure that it never happens again. Democrats abused a broken election system, and they will again in 2022 and 2024 if we don’t fix the problem and stop them. The first step is for every state in question to pursue statewide forensic audits. Arizona is a great example of a forensic audit detecting potential fraud and inconsistencies with ballots.

In Arizona, elected officials began an audit of votes from the 2020 election in Maricopa County, which holds more than half of the state’s population. In a letter to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said that the audit revealed there are “a significant number of instances in which there is a disparity between the actual number of ballots contained in [batches] and the total denoted on the pink report slip accompanying [batches].” She added that in most cases, “the total on the pink report slip is greater than the number of ballots in the batch.”

The only people afraid of forensic audits are those with something to hide. If ballot irregularities are appearing in Arizona, there is a good chance the same will happen in Georgia and other states throughout the country with forensic audits. All candidates who claim to support the MAGA movement should demand forensic audits in their states. Even if President Trump won your state, you are not safe from Democrats stealing your election next time. Trust me. If Democrats can steal Georgia, they can steal your state as well.

I’ve called for Governor Kemp to issue a statewide audit in Georgia. I joined more than 500 of my Republican friends in Georgia in an open letter to Governor Kemp demanding a forensic audit of every single ballot in the state from the 2020 presidential election. Unfortunately, he has continued to refuse.

Support for President Trump’s MAGA movement should be the litmus test for every candidate running for office. President Trump said it best when he visited North Carolina for the state’s GOP convention on June 5: “The survival of America depends on our ability to elect Republicans at every level starting with the midterms next year.” And the Republicans we elect need to be candidates who support the MAGA movement that President Trump started. We cannot accept anything less.

Regardless of the 2020 election results, the MAGA movement will continue to gain momentum and be the foundational framework for conservative American policy moving forward. I will proudly stand by President Trump and will proudly continue to support the MAGA movement when I am elected to office. This is about the American people and building a future that leaves no one behind. Together, we can Make America Great Again.

(Vernon Jones was a member of Georgia’s legislature from 2017-2021. He is now a 2022 candidate for governor of his state.)