The current version of the State Election Board in Georgia was made possible by the 2021 state election law overhaul known as the “Election Integrity Act.” The law was passed in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020, largely to send a signal to angry Trump supporters that, the next time around, they would be able to trust elections in the State of Georgia.
The process made Democrats livid, but the need for voters to trust the electoral system in a democracy is real. In the face of Trump falsely insisting the election was rigged against him, Republicans needed something to take back to their voters. Over the objections of Democrats, they made changes large and small to convince their voters that yes, their votes will count.
Along with requiring photo identification for mail-in ballots and scrapping most ballot drop boxes used during COVID, the law also removed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as the chairman of the State Election Board. The Legislature then gave itself the power to shape the Board.
The removal of Raffensperger from the board originated with the late House Speaker David Ralston, a Republican, who never helped Trump in his efforts to overturn the election. But Ralston did complain, loudly, that Raffensperger should not have made major changes to election procedures during COVID without the input of the Legislature, especially during an election year.
Now in 2024, the “next time around” has arrived. But three years after the Election Integrity Act passed, the Board of Elections it empowered has, for many Georgians, put its own integrity in doubt.
Nobody could have undermined the integrity of the State Election Board more recently than Donald Trump himself, when he called out three of the four Republican Election Board members by name at his recent Atlanta rally, declaring Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King “all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”
In that moment, Trump made clear that he considers all three to be on his team. Whether they all see themselves that way, too, is not clear, but the doubt Trump’s praise created is a serious problem in a 50-50 state where the trust of Democratic voters is as important as the trust of Republican voters.
Moments after Trump called out their names, he asked if any of the three were in the audience. Johnston stood to wave with a smile, and a huge cheer erupted, along with shouts of “Hero!”
Later the next week, a report emerged that Jeffares had been in negotiations for a job in a future Trump administration. Jeffares told the AJC he never formally requested a job, but said he had been offered a position in the first Trump term and has spoken casually about being available for a regional job with the Environmental Protection Agency if Trump wins again.
Jeffares was not at the Trump rally, nor was Janelle King, But she has appeared on Fox News several times since then as a political analyst, usually criticizing President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party itself.
During the Democratic convention last week, King was asked about the economic policies Harris has proposed. She warned of the dangers.
“As if we need any more layoffs, as if we need any more price hikes,” she said. “This is just going to be disastrous. I think they are trying to put these rose-colored glasses on all of us in America so that we can see them as a relief factor when in fact, they are the reason we’re in the very situation we’re in right now.”
If Johnston, Jeffares, and King were private citizens, none of those details would be important. But as three members of the state board entrusted with the rules governing the upcoming election, they have to know that their own integrity is as important to voters as the rules they propose and the votes they’re taking.
The rules they’ve recently approved are raising red flags, too.
The most consequential, approved on a 3-2 vote with King, Jeffares, and Johnston voting yes, is the decision to require that local election boards conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results. Board Chairman John Fervier voted against the rule because he said the term “reasonable inquiry” is unclear and will cause more uncertainty than it’s meant to eliminate.
The same rule is at the root of a worst-case-scenario that voting watchdog groups across the country warn is not at all difficult to imagine in a state like Georgia, where the results of the presidential election are likely to be very close.
If even one of Georgia’s 159 counties fails to certify the November election results because of its “reasonable inquiry,” the state of Georgia may not be able to certify its election. That would not only hold up every election in every county in Georgia, it could put the entire country’s presidential election result in doubt.
That’s the kind of chaos that even Republicans warn is being enabled by the changes made over the summer by the board.
Secretary of State Raffensperger called the moves “11th-hour chaos.” Democrats, led by U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, held a news conference at the state Capitol Monday to declare the State Election Board “an equal co-conspirator” with Trump to suppress our votes and called on Gov. Brian Kemp to investigate and remove the three Trump-favored Election Board members.
Later that day, the Democratic National Committee and the Georgia Democratic Party sued to stop some of the new rules from going into effect, arguing that the Board exceeded its authority.
Last-minute changes to election rules, overstepping authority — they’re the exact same things Republicans accused Raffensperger of when they removed him from the Board in 2021 and reconfigured it with the Election Integrity Act.
The members of the State Election Board need to do much more between now and Election Day to assure Georgians that they can be trusted to referee Georgia’s election, not be cheerleaders. Unfortunately, we all know what can happen next when an election’s integrity is in doubt.
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