When GOP lawmakers passed an elections overhaul bill in the wake of the 2020 elections, they did it in the name of “election integrity.” With most Republican voters believing what former President Donald Trump was falsely claiming — that the 2020 election was stolen from him — the lawmakers said they had no choice but to take steps to convince their voters the system would be secure in the future.
And in a way they were right. Democracy relies on the consent of the governed, and if half the population believes elections are fraudulent, then we’re not far from a majority giving up on democracy altogether.
Now, one of the products of that election law overhaul, the reconfigured State Election Board, is actively eroding the very voter confidence they were designed to build — raising the ire of Democrats and plenty of Republicans who say the panel has overstepped its bounds and played favorites with pro-Trump activists to the point of impropriety.
For anyone already worried about the board, which made headlines when Trump praised three of its GOP members as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory,” the panel’s most recent meeting Tuesday would have left you downright disturbed.
During the eight-plus-hour session, members ignored legal guidance from the Georgia Attorney General, who acts as their attorney; voted to subpoena Fulton County for records in a 2020 case that the board had already adjudicated; received a voter challenge report from a staff member who admitted he’s no expert in voter challenges; and argued about who to appoint as vice chair and even when to have their next meeting.
With just a week before the beginning of early voting, the overall impression was one of deep dysfunction and divided loyalties. How much confidence can any Georgian have in that?
The board is officially chaired by John Fervier, the Waffle House executive and nonpartisan appointee of Gov. Brian Kemp. But for the last six months, the real power has been wielded by Janice Johnston, the Georgia GOP’s appointee to the board, along with former GOP state Sen. Rick Jeffares and Republican media personality Janelle King.
On Tuesday, Fervier and Sara Tindall Ghazal, the appointee of the Democratic Party of Georgia, were routinely outvoted by the three Trump “pit bulls,” including on the vote to make Johnston the second-in-command after King made a motion to appoint her.
The first to object was Fervier, who noted that although he was appointed by Kemp, Fervier said he supports no candidate and has not been a member of the Republican Party for more than 20 years. “Electing a partisan member doesn’t seem right to me,” he said.
Johnson, by contrast, was not only appointed by the state Republican Party, she was sitting in the second row of the Trump rally where he praised her by name as the crowd shouted “Hero!”
Ghazal, the Democrat, said neither she nor Johnston should be vice chair since she they were both appointed by political parties.
“I think the perception of the public and the faith that the public puts in us is important,” she said.
By a vote of 2-1, Johnston became the vice chair.
The next business of the board was to hear a report from Executive Director of the election board Mike Coan, a former Republican member of the state House who had been tasked by a portion of the board to investigate roughly half a dozen Democratic metro counties and their apparent rejection of mass swathes of conservative voter challenges.
Coan told the board that he’s not an investigator, lawyer or expert in voting processes. “I went from a guy who didn’t know a whole lot about it to, after 10 days of intense training, I know a lot more now than I did then.” That training was the investigation itself.
After visiting some but not all of the counties assigned, Coan concluded that the counties appeared to him to have engaged in “a systematic denial of voter challenges” through artificial rules and arbitrary decisions.
“This is important, guys, and if you don’t think it is you need to go get your head examined,” he said.
Coan’s conclusions drew an immediate rebuttal from Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper, an election lawyer who said she was “flabbergasted” by what she had just watched.
“You are coming here and saying you know very little about this and yet telling us how the system should run,” she said.
Daniel White, an attorney for Cobb County, said the investigation is no more than “a narrative that, apparently, this board wants to set out into the public.”
“I don’t think this board has followed the law,” he said. “I don’t think the board has the jurisdiction to discuss this.”
The most combative moment came when Johnston, King, and Jeffares moved to subpoena the Fulton County Election Board for records related to the 2020 elections and ordered the county board to appear at a future hearing. The issue over who should monitor Fulton’s elections in November is one that Ghazal warned the State Election Board has no legal right to demand.
But King said the opposite.
“This is not the board wanting to put pressure on any county, but if you’re not going to listen and you’re not going to be responsive, if you’re not going to do what you say you’re going to do, then we have to,” King said.
That same day, Fulton County sued the election board. And that is just one of multiple suits pending against the state board, from both Democrats and Republicans, after months of sweeping new rules, last-minutes mandates and impromptu investigations.
With early voting starting Tuesday, the State Election Board members should stand back to consider why they’ve been empowered in the first place.
They may have been appointed by partisan actors, but their mandate in 2021 was to ensure election integrity for all Georgia voters, even those who do not support Trump. At this rate, they’re doing as much damage to voters’ faith in Georgia elections as they say they’re fixing.
