On Tuesday night, as Democrats cheered Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's debut as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, something considerably less joyful was going down in Atlanta.
As my colleague Ja'han Jones explained, Georgia's State Election Board, a five-member body controlled by fervent Donald Trump loyalists, adopted a rule allowing local election boards to conduct a "reasonable inquiry" before certifying election results — a task that, pursuant to Georgia statutory law, has long been understood to be mandatory and ministerial. The State Election Board failed to define what constitutes a "reasonable inquiry" and suggested — again, in contrast to plain language in Georgia law requiring counties to certify this year's election results by Nov. 12 — that such inquiries could justify failing to certify by that date (or any specific date).
But it gets worse. As good government types and local Democrats sputtered, the Georgia election board wasn't quite done. Instead, it met again Wednesday because its very newsy vote Tuesday night meant other agenda items went unaddressed.
And at Wednesday's meeting, the board revived a State Election Board complaint known as SEB 2023-025. That complaint alleges ballot tabulation improprieties, including the double counting of roughly 3,000 ballots, in Fulton County during the November 2020 presidential election. In May, the board voted to resolve that complaint by reprimanding Fulton County for such errors and appointing independent election monitors for the upcoming general election. (It's worth noting the double counting, though never conclusively determined, wouldn’t have impacted the outcome of the election.)
Yet on Wednesday, despite strenuous objections from the board's chair, John Fervier (an appointee of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican and a Trump foe), and the board's lone Democrat, Sara Tindall Ghazal, the three remaining members reopened that complaint and approved referring it to Georgia's attorney general, Chris Carr.
Focusing solely or mostly on Trump's reaction misses the real danger in how Georgia's State Election Board is conducting itself.
Trump praised those three members for their "courage" over the weekend. And lest you think Wednesday's proceedings were too granular for the former president, he indeed was paying attention: Trump not only reposted a six-plus-minute video of the vote and related discussion to Truth Social, but insisted that Carr, Kemp and GOP Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger "MUST get moving on this" because "[w]e can't let this happen again. WE MUST WIN GEORGIA IN 2024!!!" Unsaid, of course, was how yet another investigation of alleged errors in Fulton County's conduct of the 2020 election — none of which would have changed the outcome — relate to the fight for Georgia's electoral votes this year.
Nonetheless, focusing solely or mostly on Trump's reaction misses the real danger in how Georgia's State Election Board is conducting itself. During the clip Trump shared, one of the members he has praised, Janelle King, reacted to Fervier's repeat warnings that the board's actions might run counter to state law. For example, according to public reporting, the Georgia attorney general's office — which has now been charged with conducting a new investigation — had advised Fervier that reopening the complaint would itself be unlawful. A source close to the board confirms that Carr's office provided such guidance through a written memo in June.
King is a recent addition to the board, chosen after her predecessor, Ed Lindsey, opposed ending no-excuse mail-in voting and then voted against referring the Fulton County complaint to the state attorney general in May. He abruptly resigned on May 15, Rolling Stone reported, leading to King's selection.
Thus, one might think that given her relative inexperience, King might reflect on Fervier's concerns with care. Instead, she scoffed, proclaiming that if the meeting were a drinking game and the members each had to drink each time he said that, they’d have been wasted. And then, drunk only on fidelity to Trump, she insisted that irrespective of the law, referring the complaint to the state attorney general was the right thing to do.
One last thing: You might be wondering where Raffensperger is in all of this. After all, as Georgia's secretary of state, the administration of the state's elections falls squarely in his domain. In fact, it's precisely because of that domain that Raffensperger — who resisted Trump's infamous Jan. 2, 2021, plea to "find 11,780 votes" — fell out with Trump four years ago.
The answer is, nowhere — but hardly by Raffensperger's own choice. Following the 2020 election, the Georgia Legislature removed him as a voting member of the Georgia election board. Then, during this past legislative session, they passed legislation ejecting Raffensperger from the board entirely and authorizing the board to investigate him. Nonetheless, Raffensperger continues to focus on real election security measures. While the Georgia election board appeared to flout state law, Raffensperger partnered Wednesday with the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to host a “tabletop exercise” for local election and IT officials to ensure the physical and cybersecurity of the vote in Georgia this November.
It's clear, with under 90 days to go before the 2024 general election, that something is amiss in Georgia election administration. But it's not the results of the 2020 election, the conduct of Fulton County, or the actions of Trump's favorite Peach State punching bag, Brad Raffensperger.
Rather, the State Election Board is out of control — and it could be that only litigation will stop it from disenfranchising its own citizens. Watch this space.