When Donald Trump showed up for a rally in Atlanta last Saturday, he cheered on those who are supposed to be the state’s neutral election administrators.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way,” Trump told the crowd. “They’re on fire. They’re doing a great job. Three members: Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffries and Janelle King. Three people, all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”
Just three days later, those three members of the state election board jammed through a measure that will grant new powers to county officials: the ability to hold up certification if they have doubts.
In a Tuesday evening vote, the Georgia election board gave local officials the power to engage in a “reasonable inquiry” (which has been left undefined) to make sure that “the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.” Until now, counties in the state had a week after an election to certify the results, ensuring that the process chugs along even if the tally can be challenged later. The state Legislature hasn’t given county officials the kind of independent authority that would allow them to do such an inquiry — a question that will likely end up in the courts.
Although the measure’s supporters assured that this merely empowers local officials to do better due diligence and won’t necessarily slow down the election process, the change actually gives county elections boards ammunition to halt the process at the micro level.
In essence, Trump’s allies have taken the spirit of the former president’s failed tactic to stall the 2020 election certification in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and exported it to the lowest rung in the nation’s election system.
Johnston, a Republican board member who faced criticism for attending the Trump rally over the weekend, acknowledged that the new powers will transform the role of county elections officials. She rejects the idea that local administrators are “just a prop” who rubber-stamp incoming tallies.
“If there’s no inquiry, it makes a farce of the election,” Johnston said during the hearing, stressing that local officials “should be able to see every single document in the election office” before attesting to the accuracy of a final count.
Trump’s actions after the 2020 election loomed large over the board’s vote. The former president spread conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud, inundated courts nationwide with ultimately fruitless legal challenges and was recorded telling Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” for him to flip Georgia in his favor.
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the board, warned about the danger of tinkering with the state’s functioning administrative process on the eve of the November election.
“I want to make it clear for the record that this board is determining that 90 days before the election is not too late to be making changes to our election laws, rules and procedures,” Ghazal said.
King, one of the three board members praised by Trump over the weekend, pushed back.
“I think by supporting this rule, what we’re saying is that we stand with those who have to sign legal documents stating that their information is accurate and ensuring that they have what’s necessary to stand by that legal document,” she said.
Earlier in the meeting, King chided a member of the public who expressed a personal concern that Black voters might be disproportionately disenfranchised by the change. King pointed out that she is Black and didn’t feel disempowered in any way.
Those who know Georgia’s voting system best think the plan will backfire for Trump loyalists and possibly cause more harm to Republicans than Democrats. One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told NOTUS they expect most county-level challenges to be raised in far-right-leaning corners of the state where Trump’s meritless election system doubts have taken hold. In effect, this change could delay results from Trump-leaning districts more than those leaning toward Vice President Kamala Harris.
“They’re trying to spark the idea in people’s heads that they can delay as long as possible,” this person said. “It’s self-defeating because it won’t work in Fulton.”
As the Trump-friendly state election board members noted at Tuesday’s meeting, a lone election denier can’t hold up county-level certification. A majority could outvote them. But that argument actually underscores how left-leaning districts are better positioned to overcome any delay stemming from this new measure.
The official who spoke to NOTUS pointed out how, instead, delays are now expected in Republican-controlled counties like Cherokee, Spalding or even Coffee, where Trump allies illegally accessed voting machines in 2020.
Other states have seen what happens when county officials hold up certification. ProPublica has cataloged how some local administrators in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania initially refused to validate results in the 2022 midterms, eventually losing that battle — at times under pressure after a judge ordered them to do it.
Election deniers have also taken the reins in parts of Georgia, like in Spalding County just south of Atlanta, as Justin Glawe reported in Rolling Stone. The Guardian also recently reported that Julie Adams, a Republican on the Fulton County election board who refused to certify primary results in May, belongs to an election-denial activist network called Election Integrity Network. That network was founded by the conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell — an attorney who a grand jury alleged helped Trump try to overturn the state election results in 2020 and was on the infamous phone call between the then-president and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Adams’ lawsuit questioning whether a board member’s duty to certify an election is “discretionary” is playing out in state court. New York University law school’s Brennan Center for Justice intervened to warn about “the danger that discretionary certification poses.”
“Officials who refuse to certify valid results could delay or disrupt statutorily-mandated post-election processes and the state’s ability to meet important state and federal deadlines for counting votes and certifying election results,” its lawyers wrote last month.
Any chaotic fallout from this measure will be sorted out in Georgia courts, where judges will have to determine whether the state election board overstepped its authority this week. The three members who voted in favor of the change ignored the warnings of Nikhel Sus, an elections law expert at the government watchdog group CREW, who explained how the measure is likely illegal during the hearing. Sus said it won’t hold up in court.
“Everybody has to stay in their lane and do their jobs,” Sus told them, using a football analogy and comparing local officials to a center who would never think of halting a game if they bizarrely refused to snap the ball to the quarterback.
After he spoke, several members of the public balked at Sus’ warning.
“Now we’re inviting attorneys from D.C. to come tell us what to do in Georgia, and that is not right,” said Salleigh Grubbs, the Cobb County GOP chair. “Mr. Sus is gonna be the first one to sue … these NGO organizations, they are sent here to Georgia directly to do this, and I don’t know when people are going to wake up and realize Georgia is under attack … and it is on purpose and by design.”
Hours after the vote, Trump’s former campaign spokeswoman declared victory.
“This is great news, because CREW and the ACLU say it’s the end of democracy,” Liz Harrington said on X.
—
Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.