The expanding controversy over a State Election Board controlled by loyalists to former President Donald Trump is putting Gov. Brian Kemp and his Republican allies into exactly the position they hoped to avoid: a debate over the last election.
With two months until the November election, the three-member majority of the board is trying to muscle through a series of election rule changes that critics fear would spark a crisis if the results are disputed again, as they were in 2020.
And Kemp, the leader of Georgia’s mainstream GOP wing, is smack in the middle of another election-year drama that could serve as a dress rehearsal for another MAGA attempt to overturn Georgia’s vote if the former president loses again.
The new election rules alarm voting rights advocates who say additional requirements to verify vote counts could be used by Republican county election board members as a justification to refuse to certify results. Republicans say the rules are needed to ensure accuracy.
“This is the most nefarious part of a plan to put in place election officials who are sympathetic to Donald Trump’s claim that the last election was stolen from him,” said Michael Luttig, a Republican former federal appeals court judge and Trump critic.
Trump has complained for years about his loss in Georgia in 2020, but he and his allies failed to prove widespread fraud. Multiple vote counts, investigations and court cases have countered Trump’s allegations, upholding Joe Biden’s narrow victory to become president.
On one flank, Democrats and voting rights groups are trying to force Kemp to initiate a rarely used procedure to remove the trio of board members, saying he should launch an immediate probe into whether they violated state ethics laws.
Far-right Republicans, meanwhile, have accused Kemp of failing to support the pro-Trump majority’s attempts to revive inquiries into Fulton County’s 2020 vote count or allow for open-ended investigations of the upcoming election.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The dispute could have far-reaching implications. Trump has lionized the three, calling them “pit bulls” for voter integrity at the same Atlanta rally where he also berated Kemp. Some have leaned into their newfound prominence.
Republicans who back Trump are holding up the State Election Board as defenders of secure elections.
Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley described opponents of the changes in sweeping terms, saying they’ll “stop at nothing to eliminate basic safeguards against cheating and fraud” in Georgia.
The board members are opposed by a coalition that spans across party lines. The Democratic Party — with support from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign — sued last month to block the new rules from taking effect, predicting they will “ignite chaos” if Trump contests a close loss.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump pressured to “find” enough votes to reverse his 2020 loss, has warned that “eleventh-hour changes” involving unelected bureaucrats could wreak havoc on Georgia’s election system. His chief deputy, Gabriel Sterling, said implementing even minor changes this close to a vote brings “unintended consequences.”
“The State Election Board is a mess, and they’ve never run an election,” Raffensperger said. “You don’t make changes in the last moment because it really makes it difficult. It sets counties up to have issues, and we want our counties to have a safe, successful election.”
For Kemp, a veteran of Trump-driven attacks on Georgia’s election process, navigating the two-month stretch before the November election will be tricky.
The governor is trying to balance his allegiance to his party — and a nominee who recently revived a one-sided feud with Kemp before backing off — while preparing for what could be a new onslaught of Trumpian attacks on a voting system he’s long defended.
And Kemp critics are happy to ratchet up the pressure. The Fair Fight voting rights group founded by Kemp rival Stacey Abrams launched a TV ad Thursday accusing the board of “a conspiracy that could help Trump.”
No stranger to being squeezed on both flanks, Kemp for now has tried to insulate himself by asking state Attorney General Chris Carr, a close political ally, to issue an opinion on whether he has the legal authority to remove a board member.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Carr sidestepped a decision, instead issuing a formal opinion on Friday that said the Democratic officials and voting rights activists demanding that Kemp remove the members don’t have the legal authority to trigger a hearing.
But that opinion will likely only blunt the blowback. Some MAGA activists in Georgia are already telegraphing what could become their narrative by November, casting the board’s proposed changes as a quest for voter integrity.
“We all believe the State Elections Board should have its own investigators and independent counsel to be able to fully carry out its statutorily mandated duties and that the legislature should appropriate the funding necessary to make those changes,” Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon and other members of the party’s executive committee stated in an open letter.
Prominent Democrats, including state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, say the State Election Board is working “to sow chaos and doubt” in the election.
“The election board is clearly doing the bidding of Donald Trump and his MAGA allies by passing these new rules that subvert our democracy by giving local election officials new papers to basically obstruct the certification of election results,” said Parkes, a Democrat from Duluth who filed an ethics complaint against the board’s Republican majority.
An election-year MAGA majority
The board’s direction changed dramatically in May when state House Speaker Jon Burns replaced former state Rep. Ed Lindsey after months of pressure from the party’s ultraconservative flank.
McKoon had gone so far as to approve a nonbinding referendum question on Georgia primary ballots questioning whether a registered lobbyist should serve on the panel — a not-so-subtle reference to Lindsey’s job.
Burns tapped conservative commentator Janelle King to fill the slot, making her the swing vote. McKoon greeted the news at the Georgia GOP convention by cheering a new “3-2 election integrity-minded majority.”
Since then, the new bloc has pushed through changes to require an undefined “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results that could give partisan county election board members more discretion to reject the outcome. The majority also approved another rule that calls for local election boards to review troves of documents before certifying elections one week after Election Day, on Nov. 12.
King has embraced her role, becoming a de facto spokeswoman for the three-member majority. She’s made a string of nationally televised appearances and regularly spars with critics on social media.
“I absolutely oppose the characterization that we’re doing anything unethical,” King said. “What we’re dealing with right now is strictly political. (Democrats) decided to create a narrative that’s not correct, and that’s on them. I don’t want to hurt anybody. We’re not trying to make it difficult.”
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Trump supporters also have cheered on two other board members: Janice Johnston, a hero to Republican election skeptics who stood at a Trump rally as a crowd applauded; and Rick Jeffares, who proposed himself as a candidate for a post as regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency if Trump wins.
Jeffares’ interest in working for the Trump administration is part of the basis for Democrats’ ethics complaints against the board. He’s also lamented Trump’s decision to praise him and the other two board members, saying it’s been a “hardship” on the trio.
“I have emails and voicemail messages that would make you blush,” he said.
New powers and risks before Election Day
Even with the victories on the election board, MAGA factions have gone into attack mode.
Several Trump allies with large social media followings have accused Kemp of trying to “defund” the board because his budget blueprint earlier this year didn’t include about $25,000 for a new website for the agency.
While such requests from state agencies large and small are regularly rejected — and rarely become political footballs — MAGA activists quickly seized on the months-old appropriation to accuse the governor of “withholding funding.”
One far-right provocateur, Kylie Jane Kremer, recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise cash for the agency. The board’s Kemp-appointed chairman made clear that it wouldn’t accept outside funding as he tried to tamp down the right-wing attacks.
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
“Any claims being made that the State Election Board has been defunded or stripped of its funding by Gov. Kemp or the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget are simply not true,” said John Fervier, a Waffle House executive tapped by Kemp in January to lead the fractious board.
Meanwhile, county election directors are warning the State Election Board not to change the mechanics of elections on short notice, leaving little time to train election workers.
The board is considering a variety of additional rule proposals this month, including requirements to hand-count the number of ballots, publicly post lists of registered voters and give poll watchers greater access.
“It has been a little bit frustrating for us, sitting on this side of things and offering our services as professionals,” Greene County Elections Director Rebecca Anglin said. “We’re not being heard, and our opinion is not being valued.”
Sterling, the Raffensperger deputy, joined the chorus of election officials who warned the late-breaking changes could yield to a barrage of litigation and other challenges. If it were up to him, Sterling added, none of these proposed rules should be on the table during an election year.
“You shouldn’t be doing these sorts of things this late in the game. We’re trying to reinforce peoples’ faith in the system,” Sterling said. “But if you’re trading one peoples’ faith and losing it from the other side, are you getting a net gain?”
