The morning of Election Day, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blamed Russia for creating bomb scares at polling places in the swing state of Georgia. “They’re up to mischief it seems,” Raffensperger said at a press conference of Russia’s efforts. “They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair, and accurate election.”
The bomb threats temporarily closedtwo voting sites in Union City, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, according to the Election Protection Coalition, which monitors Election Day disruptions. Union City is nearly 90 percent Black and therefore tends to be overwhelmingly Democratic. The county is attempting to extend voting hours at the affected locations.
Five non-credible bomb threats were called in on Tuesday morning. Raffensperger said Russia was the culprit and that federal law enforcement had helped make that determination.
The presidential race in Georgia is expected to be very close and it is one of the states that could determine who wins the White House. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a clear interest in former president Donald Trump retaking the White House. Trump is much more interested in appeasing Putin’s war in Ukraine, has expressed little loyalty to other allies, and is generally solicitous of the authoritarian leader. Vice President Kamala Harris, conversely, has stated her commitment to supporting Ukraine as well as strengthening NATO.
Georgia appears to be a target of Russian meddling this year. A fake video purporting to show recent Haitian immigrants illegally voting for Harris in the state was produced and disseminatedby a Russian disinformation outfit, US intelligence officials revealed last week. And this is only the most recent example of a months-long effort byRussian-backed propaganda totarget the Harris campaign. As Mother Jones previously reported, the disinformation group responsible for the Georgia video also is believed to be behind another fake video purporting to show ballots for Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania.
Four years ago, Georgia was at the center of a political maelstrom. On top of the two runoff elections that resulted in Democratic control of the Senate, there was also Donald Trump’s demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,779 votes to secure his victory there. Georgia delivered high drama on an impressive scale.
The state is likely to be the site of a neck-and-neck race between Trump and Kamala Harris this year, with shifting demographics slowly nudging it from red to blue. The change is driven by growing numbers of immigrants, African Americans, and young people. But as we traveled around the state, it was clear that Georgia’s youth vote isn’t a gimme for Democrats.
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Earlier this month in Athens, Georgia, a young voter told me, “If there is a threat to democracy, it’s certainly not Donald Trump.” He detailed what he saw as the alleged abuses perpetrated by Democrats, including jailing Trump supporters and indicting him four times. “They forced Joe Biden off the top of the ticket against his will and appointed a replacement nominee,” he added. “Not elected, appointed a replacement nominee.”
Young conservatives are a formidable presence in Georgia, which has the highest proportion of people under 30 of any swing state. They will be instrumental in determining the outcome of the election. During my recent conversations with them, the economy repeatedly ranked as their top concern. Hardly anyone mentioned abortion, gender, or climate change. Most of them were politically active, belonging to groups like the College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and the Young Patriots Association, and several had interned at the state capitol.
“I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether information is true or it’s false.”
Jefry Capinegro, a junior at the University of Georgia, is a thoughtful, serious 24-year-old who sees himself as “pretty far to the right.” He says he’s deeply committed to the truth, and he reads the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, as well as bouncing between multiple TV news sources.
When I asked about potential threats to democracy, Jefry told me that Democrats are trying to censor conservatives on social media, a sentiment I heard multiple times from other young people. I pressed Jefry on whether it was okay to limit information that is false or incites violence. “I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether information is true or it’s false,” he said. He insisted that it is dangerous to allow the government to decipher fact from fiction because “we’ve seen these fact-checks to be wrong on numerous occasions.”
Jefry cited Trump and JD Vance’s claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. He said that while it sounded crazy at first, it was actually based in truth—he had seen the video. He described police body cam footage that shows a Haitian woman with blood on her face as officers ask her repeatedly if she ate a cat that laid on the ground.
I found the video he was referencing. It turns out the incident happened 174 miles from Springfield, and it shows an American-born Black woman who later pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple criminal charges. When I shared this information with Jefry via text, he immediately responded, “Thank you for finding that. I stand corrected. Perhaps not the best example to cite, but glad to know now.”
The following excerpts have been condensed for clarity.
Daniel Shaver in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
We’ve gone to a point now where the polarization between the Republican and the Democratic Party has gotten so bad that people are afraid to speak out. And I feel like to an extent that is a violation of people’s rights to freedom of thought and expression. I know people who have personally lost their jobs because their employers did not agree with their political beliefs. I’ve also seen people have things taken down on social media because their views were considered misinformation. And I think that is dangerous to personal freedom.
I have felt pressure, as far as societal pressure. If you don’t agree with me on this, then you’re not going to be part of our club. You’re not going to get this job. There’s a lot of that pressure going on. It’s the unspoken, the silent tension that people have to deal with. And I feel like that is very sad and it’s dangerous to the future of our country. You shouldn’t have to be afraid to say, I’m Republican, I’m Democrat, I’m independent. You shouldn’t have to feel that way. And we have to make sure that we’re all fighting to make sure that people feel safe to share their beliefs.
Miracle Jones 27-year-old health care human resources professional
Miracle Jones in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
I am a Christian, and I am a devoted Christian. So everything, my point of view, they are heavily biblically based. So when I’m looking for policies, I’m looking for policies that align more so with the Bible than anything else. Because for me, it’s always God first.
Fun fact: I’ve never registered to vote until this election, because I’m worried. I’ve never been worried. I’ve always had the mindset of God will take care of me, either way, no matter who gets in the office. But now, this time, I feel like it actually matters who gets in the office.
So with Trump policies, for instance, the gun laws, he’s, you know, pro-guns, the Lord, whether people have read that part in the Bible or not. He’s also for protecting ourselves. And then Trump he’s not for teaching you know 73 different genders or allowing men to participate in women’s sports. We all know what the Lord says about homosexuality and things of that nature. And then when it comes to the border thing, God is, he’s for borders, he’s for different nations. That’s why we have different nations and different languages to begin with, because if all the people try to come together like they once did back in the day, then they try to play God and he can’t have that, so he’s for the borders.
If you ask me, I think the Democratic Party is silencing me. I feel like they are the ones behind like the social media fact-checkers in some form or fashion, whether directly or indirectly. I think the freedom of religion is more so supported by the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
Jose Barrera Bales 20-year-old election protection organizer for Common Cause, Georgia
Jose Barrera Bales in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
I am disappointed in the 2024 election because the candidates are both on very extreme sides of the aisle. Neither one of them, you know, very much resonates with me politically. And they both have extraordinary plans that they want to implement that will increase our deficit probably more than we’ve ever seen before.
Julie Winokur: What do you say to your friends who are not voting?
Jose: I would say vote anyways, because, you know, even if it’s a protest vote, it still shows how un-content the American populace is. And even if you do vote for, you know, for somebody that I might not particularly agree with, it is a civic duty. It’s a civic responsibility. And it’s good for you to keep your voice as an individual out there.
I want to go into politics. Hope to be one of the first elected independents in Georgia. It’s a very lofty goal, some may even say impossible, but if I do achieve it, then, you know, it’ll change the status quo for the better, hopefully. The sense of hope for me is hopefully the future independent movement in Congress eventually will achieve term limits and corporate lobbying and end the political division between the Republicans and the Democrats. Maybe then the middle ground can start to mend the country a little bit.
Aqui B’Nek Wingo 26-year-old union electrician
Aqui B’Nek Wingo in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
Being black and a union member and not being a Democrat, it looks really, really weird. I see myself as a Republican in a lot of sense, but mostly I wish we had a more European style system where we have multiple different parties and everything, because there are some things Republicans do that I’m not really a big fan of and there’s some things the Democrats do that I’m a fan of.
Ever since I came out as a Black conservative, I’ve taken a lot of flak from my extended family members. I take a lot of flak even in my union. Just the other day, another black person made a racial slur towards me because I’m a Republican.
I’m not a big fan of free college for all because I’m not going to waste my own tax dollars on a useless liberal arts degree like gender studies or wherever these titles they bunch up together so people get degrees. That seems a huge waste of time and money. If we’re investing more into, let’s say, trade programs that we can go out to work, that’ll be better because in construction fields across the country, it’s such a huge shortage of people because the last 30 years there’s been a push for college, college, college. Trade is bad, trade is bad, trade is bad.
I don’t trust Western media, and I hate saying it like that, but our media, especially here in the US, is extremely biased. So what I always do is I go to Sky News. I’ll go to Visegrád 24 on Twitter. There’s Polish news I look at. I also look at DW, France 24, and sometimes the Japanese, because I want the most unbiased stuff that I can get, and the best way I can get it is by one looking at different countries in different news sources outside the country and multiple sources to gain a broader picture of what I want to see.
JefryCapinegro 24-year-old college student
Jefry Capinegro in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
I am an immigrant to this country. I was born in Guatemala, and I was adopted when I was six months old. At the time, the immigration issue was maybe not as in the headlines as it is today, but as the immigration issue has come to the forefront.
Here at the University of Georgia, this community, this campus, we’ve seen the ugly side. Laken Riley took a jog one morning down by the intramural fields on the south campus, as many people do. But she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it was an illegal immigrant who attacked her, who sexually assaulted her, and who murdered her. It should have never happened. It happens far too often. One time was too many. But this community felt the impact.
Oftentimes people perceive the whole immigration argument is very black and white, very pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Well, certainly I’m pro-immigration. I myself am an immigrant. But the key word in there that seems to be somehow lost is ‘illegal’. The Republican Party, the conservative, whatever you want to call them, we are absolutely pro-immigration. I think we all understand that this country was founded and built on immigration. We are very pro-immigration. We’re just not pro-illegal immigration.
AbigailRay 22-year-old college student
Abigail Ray in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
My feelings about the upcoming election, I would have to say, are: It’s nerve-wracking. It’s really nerve-wracking because I feel like we’re on a trajectory—like heading towards a cliff, like we’re going towards a cliff. We’re speeding there. And I feel like if we do not secure this election and if, in my opinion, the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, doesn’t win, I feel like we will not be able to, you know, turn the wheel and jerk it and save our country.
I feel like we need to save the country from further annihilation. I’ll give you an example. Flying around Athens, Georgia, for the last three days has been an airplane toting the banner that says: Abortion pills by mail. And rather than Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party wanting to advocate for, you know, a happier, healthier society where people can afford to have children and where men actually want to impregnate women and want to raise kids and have a happy family and a good society where kids can thrive, rather than do that, they want to make it easier for Americans to cut themselves down at the knee. They want to make it easier to take away our rights. And it just doesn’t make any sense.
Julie Winokur: The abortion pill airplane, is that a Harris campaign advertisement?
Abigail: No, there’s no name on the on the sign, but it’s blue. And we know that there were abortion vans outside the Democratic National Convention where they were literally having people come and get an abortion in a van. And so what you can detect from that is that they must not want to advocate for pro-American life. They must not actually love us.
Chaston Atkins in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
I’ve always necessarily been critical of President Trump, and I think that I have not necessarily been on the populist bandwagon.
Because I am a political science major, a lot of my friends are politically engaged. I would say that maybe 35 to 45 percent of my friends are actually liberal or moderate or not necessarily conservative. And, you know, that just comes with the territory of being on a college campus, engaging with people who have different ideas. And so it just comes to dealing with those people, being cordial, being kind, knowing that we’re not going to agree on everything, but we have other things that we can agree on and that we should work on those things and try not to be hyperpartisan, which I think is detrimental not just to the individual but to the government and to society as a whole.
I don’t necessarily believe that there is a threat to democracy. I think people are hyperpartisan, they’re mad, they’re angry, they’re being hostile, and that’s something that you can say is brought on by politicians who are seen as somewhat demagogue-like.
I believe that former President Trump has already said that he would step down in case of him losing the election, but regardless as to whether he said it or not, I think he ultimately will. I think that everyone learned their lesson from what happened last time, that you can’t let things get out of control. You can’t let things become riotous. I don’t think that’ll happen at all this time. I think that regardless of the outcome, I think we’re going to be in safe hands.
LauraKelley 22-year-old college student
Laura Kelley in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures
Everything is so difficult with politics, in my opinion, because I’m a conservative and I believe that government should not be super involved in people’s lives. People should have the freedom to do what they want, and that’s the best thing about America.
So with books in schools, that’s so difficult. My mom is actually a librarian in an elementary school and it’s in a northern county in Georgia, so obviously the population is very conservative. And when this topic came to light the school board was super against certain books to be put into the schools. So therefore, my mom had to make those selections. But also it’s like those kids want to read those books. So it’s just so complicated, like maybe the kids should be able to buy it outside school if they really want to read those. But if the taxpayer is saying those books shouldn’t be allowed in schools, they shouldn’t. So I really don’t know what I believe in that.
On Monday morning, I drove to Powder Springs, Georgia, a working-class suburb 20 miles northwest of Atlanta, to see former President Donald Trump speak at a palatial Pentecostal church called Worship With Wonders. As I pulled into the 30-acre campus, a gentleman wearing a safety vest and directing traffic motioned for me to roll down my window and handed me a stack of voting guides “for you to hand out to your congregation.” Before I could tell him I didn’t have a congregation, he waved me toward the yawning parking lot, which was filling up fast with a crowd of several thousand attendees.
The organization behind both the day’s event and the voting guide (which assured readers that Trump would say “NO” to “boys competing in girls’ sports” and “YES” to allowing “only US citizens to vote”) was the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a national Christian group that aims to “mobilize and train people of faith to vote and flex their political muscles.” Their flex today turned out to be a four-hour marathon of praise music, speakers, and a lengthy intermission before Trump arrived. The extensive speaker lineup included several superstars of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) a growing charismatic movement led by a loose network of apostles and prophets who believe Christians are called to take over the government. In recent years, Trump has emerged as a key figure in this quest: In 2020, Paula White-Cain, the NAR-affiliated Florida pastor who served as Trump’s lead spiritual adviser during his presidency, warned her followers that Christians who didn’t support Trump will “have to stand accountable before God one day.”
The day’s main attraction was a meandering conversation between White-Cain, and Trump, who described him as a “champion of people of faith.” Trump reciprocated by calling White-Cain “a great person, a great woman,” and then the conversation began. Sometimes Trump answered White-Cain’s questions, but he mainly treated them prompts for what has become his trademark, meandering, stream-of-consciousness responses.
When White-Cain asked about his religious upbringing, Trump described attending his family’s Presbyterian church in Queens. “It made me feel good,” he replied, “but sometimes you couldn’t get out of there fast enough, I have to be honest.” The audience roared with appreciation for his candor. His father, Fred Trump, used to take him to see Billy Graham preach, he recalled. Which made him think of the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” Which made him think of Elvis.
“It made me feel good, but sometimes you couldn’t get out of there fast enough, I have to be honest.”
When White-Cain asked him about his recent work with Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, on relief efforts in hurricane-stricken North Carolina, Trump marveled at how tornadoes destroy some things but leave others untouched. Then he told a story about how Graham-the-younger had once asked him not to swear so much. The response to a question about Trump’s plans for US-Israel relations was the oft-repeated story of moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in 2018. This time he finished with a flourish, with an anecdote about telling the contractors to build the new embassy out of a material called “Jerusalem stone” because “a very rich guy, a very big Wall Street guy” he knew had always told him he was very proud that his building contained the material. And—score!—it also turned out to the “cheap as hell.” Trump’s most significant line of the event may have been his cryptic promise that his “faith council” would be “directly in the Oval Office.”
While Trump rambled and riffed, the speakers who preceded him, each of whom was allotted only a few minutes, cut right to the chase. Faith and Freedom Coalition president Ralph Reed announced his group had knocked on more than 8 million doors so far this election season, and then described a moment when Harris allegedly told a heckler who yelled “Christ is king” at a Wisconsin event that he was “at the wrong rally.” Reed crowed, “Today you’re at the right rally!” The crowd went wild. Lance Wallnau, a NAR apostle and key player in the “Stop the Steal” campaign promised, “In every state and every county…Christ will be glorified!” Kelly Shackelford, head of the Christian law firm First Liberty Institute, got a standing ovation when he said the “Lemon Test” for the establishment clause, which codifies the separation of church and state, is “reversed everywhere.”
The crowd was fairly diverse, and the speaker lineup, while mostly white, did include some pastors of color. Florida’s Bishop Kelvin Cobaris, the former president of the African American Council of Christian Clergy, said, “I want to tell every African American in here ‘Don’t be a afraid to lose your Black card…vote to defend religious freedom, vote to defend Israel!’” Pastor Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the enemy is “trying to kill our children in the classroom.” For a split second, I naively thought he was talking about guns, but then he clarified that the killer was “ideologies and social constructs that are out of alignment with the word of the Lord God.” The group ended the event by gathering around Trump to pray over him.
The attendees I spoke with afterward were jubilant—likely in part because after a program full of shaking their fists against “men in women’s sports” and “transgender surgeries for illegal aliens,” the crowd rocked out to the queer anthem “YMCA” as Trump was leaving the stage. Betsy Jorgensen, a volunteer with the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition, told me that she was “very confident we are going to win, barring any other tragedy.” She was from nearby Lumpkin County, which, she said, “is so red we call it Trumpkin County.” There, she had been knocking on doors and registering voters because she believed this election was crucial to right the country. “We are the last bit of a republic, of the free world,” she said. Alayna Martin, also from nearby, said she thought Trump would win “in a landslide” and that she liked him because “he cares about our faith and wants us to be a part of everything.
Sophie McLean, a regular congregant at the church where the event was held, also thought Trump would win, but her friend and fellow congregant, Jennifer Smith, wasn’t so sure. In fact, she still hadn’t yet made up her mind whom she was going to vote for. What would help her choose? I asked. “More time—I’m running out of it, but more time,” she said. “I probably need a little bit more prayer.”
This week, soon after his 100th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter was able to vote in his home state of Georgia—in part thanks to protections under the Voting Rights Act. As his grandson Jason Carter explained in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, voting assistance protections in Georgia allow family members to help cast absentee ballots (the vote can still be discarded if a signature or mark on the ballot does not match what is on file, per Georgia law).
“He sat down and told everybody what he wanted to do, and was excited about it,” Jason Carter told Tapper. “My aunt dropped his ballot [at] an absentee drop box, just like thousands and thousands of other Georgians.”
Even if Carter doesn’t consider himself disabled, many aging people benefit from disability rights laws and protections. Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act guarantees that “any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice.”
In recent years, Republicans have attacked voters’ right to assistance, sometimes with carve-outs for close family members. But courts have repeatedly found such actions unconstitutional. In Texas, in 2022, a federal court ruled that people assisting voters can further explain ballot measures if asked; just last month in Alabama, a federal judge also ruled that the state was obligated to let voters get help from any person of their choice. While some people, like Carter, choose to, it’s not an option—or preference—for everyone.
Some aging people in Georgia still face barriers to voting, even if their right to assistance hasn’t been as harshly attacked. A recent lawsuit argues that a state law enacted this year, under which votes can be challenged if a voter is registered at a nonresidential address, could impact people living in nursing homes, assisted living communities, and similar facilities.
What is unclear, as my colleague Michael Mechanic recently wrote, is whether Georgia will count Carter’s ballot should he pass away before Election Day. What is clear, during the CNN interview, is how crucial Carter finds his right to vote, and the Voting Rights Act disability protections that enable him to do so.
“He has done that forever,” his grandson said, “and is excited to keep doing it.”
This week, soon after his 100th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter was able to vote in his home state of Georgia—in part thanks to protections under the Voting Rights Act. As his grandson Jason Carter explained in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, voting assistance protections in Georgia allow family members to help cast absentee ballots (the vote can still be discarded if a signature or mark on the ballot does not match what is on file, per Georgia law).
“He sat down and told everybody what he wanted to do, and was excited about it,” Jason Carter told Tapper. “My aunt dropped his ballot [at] an absentee drop box, just like thousands and thousands of other Georgians.”
Even if Carter doesn’t consider himself disabled, many aging people benefit from disability rights laws and protections. Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act guarantees that “any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice.”
In recent years, Republicans have attacked voters’ right to assistance, sometimes with carve-outs for close family members. But courts have repeatedly found such actions unconstitutional. In Texas, in 2022, a federal court ruled that people assisting voters can further explain ballot measures if asked; just last month in Alabama, a federal judge also ruled that the state was obligated to let voters get help from any person of their choice. While some people, like Carter, choose to, it’s not an option—or preference—for everyone.
Some aging people in Georgia still face barriers to voting, even if their right to assistance hasn’t been as harshly attacked. A recent lawsuit argues that a state law enacted this year, under which votes can be challenged if a voter is registered at a nonresidential address, could impact people living in nursing homes, assisted living communities, and similar facilities.
What is unclear, as my colleague Michael Mechanic recently wrote, is whether Georgia will count Carter’s ballot should he pass away before Election Day. What is clear, during the CNN interview, is how crucial Carter finds his right to vote, and the Voting Rights Act disability protections that enable him to do so.
“He has done that forever,” his grandson said, “and is excited to keep doing it.”
A state judge on Wednesday blocked seven rule changes passed in recent months by the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia State Election Board, finding the board “lacked constitutional authority” to enact them.
It was the third ruling in two days that dealt a blow to election deniers in the state. On Tuesday, a different judge in Fulton County, Robert McBurney, held that county election boards must certify election rules and also blocked a new rule requiring a hand count of ballots on Election Night for the 2024 election, which election officials feared could delay vote counts and sow distrust in the election process.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox went further in Wednesday’s ruling, permanently blocking the hand count requirement, along with other new rules requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results and giving county officialsaccess to “all election-related documentation.” Democrats, voting rights groups, and even some Republicans feared that these rules could be used by GOP county officials as a pretext not to certify the election results if Vice President Kamala Harris carried the state. Cox also blocked rules expanding the areas where partisan poll watchers can monitor the vote counting process and new signature and ID requirements for dropping off an absentee ballot at a drop box. Collectively, Cox found that the state board violated the Georgia Constitution and usurped the legislature’s power to set election procedures.
The rule changes were challenged by a former Republican state legislator and a Republican board member in Chatham County. They represented increasing Republican opposition to the actions of the election board’s three MAGA-aligned members, who Trump praised as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” during a rally in August.
The court decisions blocking the board’s new rules are an emphatic setback for the election denial movement in one of the country’s most important battleground states. However, the elevation of 2020 skeptics to the board—and their subsequent actions—have gone a long way toward legitimizing conspiracy theories in the state. “The SEB’s work is already done,” Democratic state senator Jason Esteves wrote on X Tuesday. “They’ve laid the groundwork for MAGA to doubt and challenge the election in Georgia.”
A Georgia judge on Monday blocked a controversial rule passed by the Trump-allied majority on the Georgia State Election Board requiring the hand count of ballots on Election Night. Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney declared that the new ruled had been enacted too close to the election. McBurney invoked the January 6 insurrection in his order enjoining the eleventh-hour change that had led to fears among election officials that results could be delayed and ultimately not certified by pro-Trump officials.
“The public interest is not disserved by pressing pause here,” McBurney wrote. “This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”
It was the second decision in a day by McBurney that upheld democratic norms and handed a major loss to election deniers in the state. Earlier on Monday, McBurney ruled that county election officials were required to certify election results.
The hand count rule was passed on September 20, less than two months before the election, and was set to go into effect just as early voting began. Election officials expressed widespread concern that the new mandate would delay election returns and potentially lead to new inaccuracies in the count, which could then be weaponized by Trump and his allies to sow distrust in the voting process and pressure election officials not to certify the result if Kamala Harris carried the state.
“A rule that introduces a new and substantive role on the eve of election for more than 7,500 poll workers who will not have received any formal, cohesive, or consistent training and that allows for our paper ballots—the only tangible proof of who voted for whom—to be handled multiple times by multiple people following an exhausting Election Day all before they are securely transported to the official tabulation center does not contribute to lessening the tension or boosting the confidence of the public for this election,” McBurney wrote. “Clearly the SEB believes that the Hand Count Rule is smart election policy—and it may be right. But the timing of its passage make implementation now quite wrong.”
McBurney blocked the rule only for the 2024 election. It’s not the only controversial rule change passed by the pro-Trump majority on the election board. They also created new rules requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, and giving county officialsaccess to “all election-related documentation.” Those changes will be challenged in court in a separate lawsuit on Wednesday.
McBurney’s orders, which could go a long way toward ensuring a free and fair election in Georgia, were issued as the state saw record turnout on the first day of early voting, with more than 300,000 voters casting ballots.
A Georgia judge ruled on Tuesday that county election boards are required to certify election results—a major victory for democratic norms and a big loss for election deniers seeking to subvert the 2024 election.
“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance,” Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney wrote in a response to a lawsuit filed by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections who voted against certifying the May presidential primary. Adams works for an election denial group founded by conservative activist Cleta Mitchell, a Trump lawyer who helped spearhead the effort to overturn the 2020 results and filed her lawsuit with the support of the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute.
McBurney’s opinion is especially significant because the MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board has passed a series of controversial eleventh-hour rule changes that Democrats, voting rights groups, and even some Republicans worry could be used as a pretext not to certify the election outcome if Vice PresidentKamala Harris carries Georgia. That includes mandating a hand-count of election day ballots, requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, and giving county officialsaccess to “all election-related documentation.” Any attempt to refuse to certify the results, even if unsuccessful, could be weaponized by Trump and his allies to sow distrust about the voting process. (Those rule changes are also being challenged in court.)
In his opinion, which came as in-person early voting kicked off in Georgia, McBurney addressed the consequences if Georgia election officials attempt to defy the law. “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so—because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud—refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” he wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.”
Democrats filed a lawsuit on Monday against a new rule passed by the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia state election board requiring the hand count of ballots on Election Day, which Democrats and voting rights groups worry could delay election results and be used as a pretext by Republican officials not to certify a Democratic victory.
“If the Hand Count Rule is allowed to go into effect, the general election will not be orderly and uniform—large counties will face significant delays in reporting vote counts, election officials will struggle to implement new procedures at the last minute, poll workers will not have been trained on the new Rule because it was adopted too late, and the security of the ballots themselves will be put at risk,” the lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia states.
The hand count requirement was adopted on September 20—six weeks before the general election—by the three MAGA-aligned members of the state election board, despite warnings by the state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state that it was likely illegal. County election officials also told the board the rule could delay election results and lead to distrust of the counting process, which the Trump campaign could weaponize to pressure county officials not to certify the results if Kamala Harris wins the state.
The board’s MAGA majority, who Trump praised as “pit bulls” during a rally in Atlanta in August, have passed a series of controversial rule changes at the behest of election deniers that could plunge the vote-counting process into chaos in the state. In August, they also passed rule changes requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into the vote totals and granting them access to “all election-related documentation,” which Democrats, in a separate lawsuit, argued could delay election certification and result in the “mass disenfranchisement of eligible, registered Georgians.” That lawsuit will receive a hearing in state court on Tuesday. A Republican-led group has also filed suit against the board’s new changes.
The Harris campaign is supporting the Democrats’ lawsuits.
“We agree with Georgia’s Republican Attorney General and Secretary of State: This rule is unproductive and unlawful, and we are fighting it,” Harris deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a statement. “Democrats are stepping in to ensure that Georgia voters can cast their ballots knowing that they will be counted in a free and fair election.”
Democrats filed a lawsuit on Monday against a new rule passed by the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia state election board requiring the hand count of ballots on Election Day, which Democrats and voting rights groups worry could delay election results and be used as a pretext by Republican officials not to certify a Democratic victory.
“If the Hand Count Rule is allowed to go into effect, the general election will not be orderly and uniform—large counties will face significant delays in reporting vote counts, election officials will struggle to implement new procedures at the last minute, poll workers will not have been trained on the new Rule because it was adopted too late, and the security of the ballots themselves will be put at risk,” the lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia states.
The hand count requirement was adopted on September 20—six weeks before the general election—by the three MAGA-aligned members of the state election board, despite warnings by the state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state that it was likely illegal. County election officials also told the board the rule could delay election results and lead to distrust of the counting process, which the Trump campaign could weaponize to pressure county officials not to certify the results if Kamala Harris wins the state.
The board’s MAGA majority, who Trump praised as “pit bulls” during a rally in Atlanta in August, have passed a series of controversial rule changes at the behest of election deniers that could plunge the vote-counting process into chaos in the state. In August, they also passed rule changes requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into the vote totals and granting them access to “all election-related documentation,” which Democrats, in a separate lawsuit, argued could delay election certification and result in the “mass disenfranchisement of eligible, registered Georgians.” That lawsuit will receive a hearing in state court on Tuesday. A Republican-led group has also filed suit against the board’s new changes.
The Harris campaign is supporting the Democrats’ lawsuits.
“We agree with Georgia’s Republican Attorney General and Secretary of State: This rule is unproductive and unlawful, and we are fighting it,” Harris deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a statement. “Democrats are stepping in to ensure that Georgia voters can cast their ballots knowing that they will be counted in a free and fair election.”
Less than two months before the election, the Trump-aligned majority on the Georgia State Election Board passed a new set of eleventh-hour rule changes on Friday that could plunge the vote counting process into chaos and give Republicans yet another pretext not to certify the results if Kamala Harris wins the state.
During a highly contentious meeting, the state board voted 3-2 to require county election boards to hand count ballots cast on Election Day and then compare the results to the totals tallied by electronic voting machines to reconcile any discrepancies. While hand counts are commonly used in post-election audits to ensure accurate results, counting all votes by hand is significantly more burdensome, time-consuming, and error-prone than using standard voting machines. The rules were passed by three Republican appointees who Trump praised as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” during a rally in Atlanta in August.
“We’re so far off the deep end of sanity here,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s lone Democratic member, who voted against the rule changes, told me. “It’s a terrible, terrible idea to do this sort of thing with no notice, no training.”
Given the short time period for counties to certify the election—the deadline is the Monday after Election Day—voting rights activists worry that the new hand counting mandate, combined with rules adopted last month requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into the vote totals and access “all election-related documentation,” will be weaponized by Republicans to oppose election certification. “After changing election certification rules in ways that give new power to local election officials to refuse to certify results, the MAGA board is now changing rules in ways that seem meant to create a fail point in our system,” says Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of the voting rights group Fair Fight.
The new rules put the state board directly at odds with election officials, Republicans and Democrats alike. A lawyer for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended the results of the 2020 election, said they were likely illegal and poorly timed, noting that the new requirements will not go into effect until October 14 at the earliest, after absentee ballots have been mailed to voters on October 7 and just as in-person early voting starts on October 15.
“We’re so far off the deep end of sanity here,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s lone Democratic member, told me. “It’s a terrible, terrible idea to do this sort of thing with no notice, no training.”
“It is far too late in the election process for counties to implement new rules and procedures, and many poll workers have already completed their required training,” Charlene McGowan, the general counsel for Raffensperger, wrote to the board before Friday’s meeting. The new voting hand counting rules “would disrupt existing chain of custody protocols under the law and needlessly introduce the risk of error, lost ballots, or fraud,” she added.
The office of Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr sent a letter to the board Friday morning informing them that several of the proposed rules, including the hand count of ballots, “very likely exceed the Board’s statutory authority” and “appear to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections.” (At least two other rules approved by the board on Friday, including one that significantly expands the areas where partisan poll watchers can observe the vote counting, also likely violate state laws, the attorney general said.)
“The overwhelming number of election officials I’ve heard from are opposed to this,” said John Fervier, the GOP chair of the board, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. “It’s too close to the election. It’s too late to train a lot of poll workers. There’s a lack of resources in many counties to effectuate this rule.” Most importantly, he said, “this is not supported at all in statute.”
All five election officials who spoke during the public comment section of the meeting spoke against the new rules. “The only people who support this are activists who think that the 2020 election was stolen,” says Tindall Ghazal. “Election workers don’t want it. Election supervisors don’t want it. You don’t change the rules this dramatically, this close to the election.”
The board did, however, vote 4-1 to table another proposal to count ballots by hand during early voting, which one of the pro-Trump members, Janelle King, said could lead to privacy concerns ahead of the election. (King also criticized Raffensperger for “unethical” behavior for recording the call where Trump demanded he “find 11,780 votes” to overturn’s Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, but did not reprimand Trump for pressuring the secretary of state to overturn the election.)
The push for hand counts has become a rallying cry of election deniers who falsely blame electronic voting machines for Trump’s defeat. One of the biggest backers of this conspiracy theory is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Ironically, under the guise of protecting election integrity, hand counts actually lead to less accurate results due to human error. Numerous studies show that hand counts produce double the error rate of machine scanners. When Republicans in Nye County, Nevada, attempted to hand count ballots in 2022, they reported an error rate of 25 percent on the first day before the courts shut the effort down.
“It’s a rule looking for a problem that doesn’t exist,” says Travis Doss, executive director of the Augusta-Richmond County Board of Elections. Doss is president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, a bipartisan group of more than 500 election workers from across the state. The group asked the board last month not to pass any more rule changes before the election because it was “gravely concerned that dramatic changes at this stage will disrupt the preparation and training processes already in motion for poll workers, absentee voting, advance voting and Election Day preparation.” It specifically opposed the hand counting requitement because of “the rule’s potential to delay results; set fatigued employees up for failure; and undermine the very confidence the rule’s author claims to seek.”
There’s good reason to worry that delays or errors caused by a hand count of ballots would then be cited by Republicans as a reason not to certify the election if a Democrat wins. That occurred in 2022, when the election board in rural Cochise County, Arizona, attempted to hand count all ballots, were told by a court it was illegal, then refused to certify the results after Democrats narrowly won close state races. The two Republican board members who led the scheme were subsequently indicted by the state’s attorney general for obstructing the vote counting process.
That kind of controversy over the vote counting process is exactly what Trump and his allies seem to be agitating for, which is why they’ve worked so hard to stack local and state election boards with MAGA election deniers in places like Georgia. The new rules are “throwing things off kilter to the point where it could create chaos when that’s the last thing we need,” Doss says. (The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has also repeatedly warned states not to implement voting changes close to an election.)
Tindall Ghazal predicts that any effort to refuse to certify the election will fail, because courts and state officials will force rogue counties to approve the results, but she worries how Trump could weaponize any delay or dispute in the vote counting process, which are now far more likely to occur because of the new rules passed by his allies on the state election board.
“It leads to public uncertainty and public distrust, because it gets messy,” she says. “And that’s the real goal. To throw enough sand in the eyes of the public to make them think maybe something went wrong.”
Less than two months before the election, the Trump-aligned majority on the Georgia State Election Board passed a new set of eleventh-hour rule changes on Friday that could plunge the vote counting process into chaos and give Republicans yet another pretext not to certify the results if Kamala Harris wins the state.
During a highly contentious meeting, the state board voted 3-2 to require county election boards to hand count ballots cast on Election Day and then compare the results to the totals tallied by electronic voting machines to reconcile any discrepancies. While hand counts are commonly used in post-election audits to ensure accurate results, counting all votes by hand is significantly more burdensome, time-consuming, and error-prone than using standard voting machines. The rules were passed by three Republican appointees who Trump praised as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” during a rally in Atlanta in August.
“We’re so far off the deep end of sanity here,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s lone Democratic member, who voted against the rule changes, told me. “It’s a terrible, terrible idea to do this sort of thing with no notice, no training.”
Given the short time period for counties to certify the election—the deadline is the Monday after Election Day—voting rights activists worry that the new hand counting mandate, combined with rules adopted last month requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into the vote totals and access “all election-related documentation,” will be weaponized by Republicans to oppose election certification. “After changing election certification rules in ways that give new power to local election officials to refuse to certify results, the MAGA board is now changing rules in ways that seem meant to create a fail point in our system,” says Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of the voting rights group Fair Fight.
The new rules put the state board directly at odds with election officials, Republicans and Democrats alike. A lawyer for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended the results of the 2020 election, said they were likely illegal and poorly timed, noting that the new requirements will not go into effect until October 14 at the earliest, after absentee ballots have been mailed to voters on October 7 and just as in-person early voting starts on October 15.
“We’re so far off the deep end of sanity here,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s lone Democratic member, told me. “It’s a terrible, terrible idea to do this sort of thing with no notice, no training.”
“It is far too late in the election process for counties to implement new rules and procedures, and many poll workers have already completed their required training,” Charlene McGowan, the general counsel for Raffensperger, wrote to the board before Friday’s meeting. The new voting hand counting rules “would disrupt existing chain of custody protocols under the law and needlessly introduce the risk of error, lost ballots, or fraud,” she added.
The office of Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr sent a letter to the board Friday morning informing them that several of the proposed rules, including the hand count of ballots, “very likely exceed the Board’s statutory authority” and “appear to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections.” (At least two other rules approved by the board on Friday, including one that significantly expands the areas where partisan poll watchers can observe the vote counting, also likely violate state laws, the attorney general said.)
“The overwhelming number of election officials I’ve heard from are opposed to this,” said John Fervier, the GOP chair of the board, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. “It’s too close to the election. It’s too late to train a lot of poll workers. There’s a lack of resources in many counties to effectuate this rule.” Most importantly, he said, “this is not supported at all in statute.”
All five election officials who spoke during the public comment section of the meeting spoke against the new rules. “The only people who support this are activists who think that the 2020 election was stolen,” says Tindall Ghazal. “Election workers don’t want it. Election supervisors don’t want it. You don’t change the rules this dramatically, this close to the election.”
The board did, however, vote 4-1 to table another proposal to count ballots by hand during early voting, which one of the pro-Trump members, Janelle King, said could lead to privacy concerns ahead of the election. (King also criticized Raffensperger for “unethical” behavior for recording the call where Trump demanded he “find 11,780 votes” to overturn’s Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, but did not reprimand Trump for pressuring the secretary of state to overturn the election.)
The push for hand counts has become a rallying cry of election deniers who falsely blame electronic voting machines for Trump’s defeat. One of the biggest backers of this conspiracy theory is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Ironically, under the guise of protecting election integrity, hand counts actually lead to less accurate results due to human error. Numerous studies show that hand counts produce double the error rate of machine scanners. When Republicans in Nye County, Nevada, attempted to hand count ballots in 2022, they reported an error rate of 25 percent on the first day before the courts shut the effort down.
“It’s a rule looking for a problem that doesn’t exist,” says Travis Doss, executive director of the Augusta-Richmond County Board of Elections. Doss is president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, a bipartisan group of more than 500 election workers from across the state. The group asked the board last month not to pass any more rule changes before the election because it was “gravely concerned that dramatic changes at this stage will disrupt the preparation and training processes already in motion for poll workers, absentee voting, advance voting and Election Day preparation.” It specifically opposed the hand counting requitement because of “the rule’s potential to delay results; set fatigued employees up for failure; and undermine the very confidence the rule’s author claims to seek.”
There’s good reason to worry that delays or errors caused by a hand count of ballots would then be cited by Republicans as a reason not to certify the election if a Democrat wins. That occurred in 2022, when the election board in rural Cochise County, Arizona, attempted to hand count all ballots, were told by a court it was illegal, then refused to certify the results after Democrats narrowly won close state races. The two Republican board members who led the scheme were subsequently indicted by the state’s attorney general for obstructing the vote counting process.
That kind of controversy over the vote counting process is exactly what Trump and his allies seem to be agitating for, which is why they’ve worked so hard to stack local and state election boards with MAGA election deniers in places like Georgia. The new rules are “throwing things off kilter to the point where it could create chaos when that’s the last thing we need,” Doss says. (The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has also repeatedly warned states not to implement voting changes close to an election.)
Tindall Ghazal predicts that any effort to refuse to certify the election will fail, because courts and state officials will force rogue counties to approve the results, but she worries how Trump could weaponize any delay or dispute in the vote counting process, which are now far more likely to occur because of the new rules passed by his allies on the state election board.
“It leads to public uncertainty and public distrust, because it gets messy,” she says. “And that’s the real goal. To throw enough sand in the eyes of the public to make them think maybe something went wrong.”
On August 3, Donald Trump held a raucous rally in Georgia, where he attacked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for refusing to overturn the 2020 election and reiterated his lie that he “won” the state in 2020. But Trump singled out the new MAGA-aligned majority on the state’s election board for praise.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election [Board] is in a very positive way,” the ex-president said to cheers. “They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job. Three members: Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King. Three people, they’re all pit bulls, fighting for honesty, transparency and victory. They’re fighting.”
Johnston, a retired obstetrician who spread false claims about the 2020 election in Atlanta’s heavily Democratic Fulton County, rose from her seat near the stage and waved to the crowd. “My courage was contagious,” Trump remarked after she stood. “Well, your courage is contagious, too.”
Three days later, on the 59th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act no less, those three Republicans returned the favor to Trump, passing a new rule on a 3-2 vote requiring that counties undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into vote totals before certifying election results. It is set to go into effect in 20 days, two months before voters go to the polls in one of the country’s most important battleground states.
Legal experts say the rule is illegal and will likely be challenged in court, since county election officials have a ministerial role when it comes to certifying elections and Georgia law clearly states that local officials “shall certify” the results. But if the measure—which does not define what a “reasonable inquiry” is —stands, Democrats and voting rights groups are warning that Republican election deniers will use it as a pretext not to certify an election if a Democrat wins—the very thing Trump unsuccessfully tried to get election officials to do in 2020.
“The risk is using pretextual reasons to fail to certify when folks are not pleased with the results,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democratic Party representative on the board, when the rule was first proposed. “That is my concern—using excuses to fail to certify.”
This very thing has occurred in recent elections. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported, Republican-appointed board members in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Spalding counties voted against certifying results during both local elections last November and the presidential primary this March. The “reasonable inquiry” rule was written by a Republican board member in Fulton County, Michael Heekin, who voted against certifying the presidential primary results because of alleged ballot security concerns. Republican officials have also refused to certify election results in states including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and New Mexico.
“These are MAGA certification rules, and they’re in direct conflict with Georgia law, which states in multiple places that local elections board officials shallperform their duties, meaning their duties are mandatory, not discretionary,” State Rep. Sam Park, a lawyer and minority whip for Georgia House Democrats, said at a press conference Tuesday.
The Georgia state board’s actions are a consequence of the sweeping voter suppression law passed by the state legislature in 2021 after Trump failed to overturn the results. The law, SB202, included 16 provisions rolling back access to the ballot; the conservative group Heritage Action, the sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, took credit for the measure, saying in a leaked video obtained by Mother Jones and Documented that it included “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended.”
“These are MAGA certification rules, and they’re in direct conflict with Georgia law”
Most notably, the law removed Raffensperger, who resisted Trump’s demands to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn Biden’s victory, as chair and voting member of the state board, which oversees voting rules and election certification. Instead, it gave Republicans in the heavily gerrymandered legislature more power to choose the board’s members, which allowed election deniers to gain a controlling majority of the body this year.
In January, the Georgia Senate, run by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, confirmed Rick Jeffares as that body’s pick for the board. Jeffares posted memes shortly after the 2020 election “that suggested dead people had voted by mail, claimed the Democrats and China had colluded, and implied that Democrats had cheated,” according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. (Jones, the lieutenant governor, served as a fake member of the Electoral College, as part of Trump’s effort to overturn the election.)
Johnston, the board member who attended the Trump rally, was appointed by the Georgia Republican Party in 2022. She has already hinted that GOP county officials could use the new power given to them by the state board to refuse to certify election results.
“Not all elections are certified,” she said at the seven-hour board meeting on Tuesday. “There are ballot battles and there are elections that need to be addressed carefully, and there may be issues that prevent a board from certifying.”
State board member Tindall Ghazal says that Republican officials who have refused to certify election results “are not operating in good faith” and are trying to sow doubt about the legitimacy of elections. “It’s very clear some of the decisions are being driven by partisan interests and there’s a partisan interest in chaos.”
The move to thwart election certification is just one of many disturbing moves recently taken by the board’s MAGA-friendly majority. In another meeting Wednesday, they voted to re-open an investigation into the 2020 results in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County, where Trump and his allies spread lies about “suitcases” of ballots being counted on election night after GOP poll monitors left. As a result of SB202, the state board now has new power to take control of election administration in up to four counties it deems “underperforming,” sparking fears that Republicans will usurp election operations in heavily Democratic areas.
The board is also considering another rule that would allow county election officials to demand to review a long list of election documents before certifying results, which could further undercut efforts to certify elections in a timely manner and another measure that would give partisan poll watchers greater access to monitor the vote counting process—a key demand of election deniers who tried to disrupt the 2020 vote.
“Changing Georgia election rules with under 90 days to go should raise alarms for everyone who values the integrity of elections—these changes can be used by Trump and his allies to obstruct certification of the 2024 election results,” says Max Flugrath, a spokesman for the voting rights group Fair Fight.
Even Republicans who have denounced Trump are doing the bidding of election deniers in the state. In late July, the secretary of state’s office unveiled a new online portal that allows someone to cancel the registration of another voter online if they have allegedly died or moved out of state. Users only need to know a voter’s name, date of birth, and county residence to initiate a cancellation request, and the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or their driver’s license number in order to finalize a cancellation. That very information leaked online after the portal’s rollout, exacerbating concerns about voter privacy. Georgia Senate Democrats said the site “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.”
The portal is particularly worrisome because SB202 explicitly green-lit unlimited challenges to voter eligibility and right-wing activists challenged the registrations of roughly 100,000 people during the 2022 midterms. The Georgia legislature made it even easier to launch mass voter challenges this year, sparking fears that more voters could be wrongly removed from voter rolls. ProPublica reported that there have already been attempts to cancel the registrations of Raffensperger and far-right GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene using the new online tool.
Georgia is once again a toss-up state, as the latest projections show Kamala Harris pulling even with Trump. But the election deniers who have been empowered after 2020 are doing everything they can to rig the rules to prevent a Democrat from winning the state again.
On August 3, Donald Trump held a raucous rally in Georgia, where he attacked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for refusing to overturn the 2020 election and reiterated his lie that he “won” the state in 2020. But Trump singled out the new MAGA-aligned majority on the state’s election board for praise.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election [Board] is in a very positive way,” the ex-president said to cheers. “They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job. Three members: Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King. Three people, they’re all pit bulls, fighting for honesty, transparency and victory. They’re fighting.”
Johnston, a retired obstetrician who spread false claims about the 2020 election in Atlanta’s heavily Democratic Fulton County, rose from her seat near the stage and waved to the crowd. “My courage was contagious,” Trump remarked after she stood. “Well, your courage is contagious, too.”
Three days later, on the 59th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act no less, those three Republicans returned the favor to Trump, passing a new rule on a 3-2 vote requiring that counties undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into vote totals before certifying election results. It is set to go into effect in 20 days, two months before voters go to the polls in one of the country’s most important battleground states.
Legal experts say the rule is illegal and will likely be challenged in court, since county election officials have a ministerial role when it comes to certifying elections and Georgia law clearly states that local officials “shall certify” the results. But if the measure—which does not define what a “reasonable inquiry” is —stands, Democrats and voting rights groups are warning that Republican election deniers will use it as a pretext not to certify an election if a Democrat wins—the very thing Trump unsuccessfully tried to get election officials to do in 2020.
“The risk is using pretextual reasons to fail to certify when folks are not pleased with the results,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democratic Party representative on the board, when the rule was first proposed. “That is my concern—using excuses to fail to certify.”
This very thing has occurred in recent elections. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported, Republican-appointed board members in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Spalding counties voted against certifying results during both local elections last November and the presidential primary this March. The “reasonable inquiry” rule was written by a Republican board member in Fulton County, Michael Heekin, who voted against certifying the presidential primary results because of alleged ballot security concerns. Republican officials have also refused to certify election results in states including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and New Mexico.
“These are MAGA certification rules, and they’re in direct conflict with Georgia law, which states in multiple places that local elections board officials shallperform their duties, meaning their duties are mandatory, not discretionary,” State Rep. Sam Park, a lawyer and minority whip for Georgia House Democrats, said at a press conference Tuesday.
The Georgia state board’s actions are a consequence of the sweeping voter suppression law passed by the state legislature in 2021 after Trump failed to overturn the results. The law, SB202, included 16 provisions rolling back access to the ballot; the conservative group Heritage Action, the sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, took credit for the measure, saying in a leaked video obtained by Mother Jones and Documented that it included “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended.”
“These are MAGA certification rules, and they’re in direct conflict with Georgia law”
Most notably, the law removed Raffensperger, who resisted Trump’s demands to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn Biden’s victory, as chair and voting member of the state board, which oversees voting rules and election certification. Instead, it gave Republicans in the heavily gerrymandered legislature more power to choose the board’s members, which allowed election deniers to gain a controlling majority of the body this year.
In January, the Georgia Senate, run by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, confirmed Rick Jeffares as that body’s pick for the board. Jeffares posted memes shortly after the 2020 election “that suggested dead people had voted by mail, claimed the Democrats and China had colluded, and implied that Democrats had cheated,” according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. (Jones, the lieutenant governor, served as a fake member of the Electoral College, as part of Trump’s effort to overturn the election.)
Johnston, the board member who attended the Trump rally, was appointed by the Georgia Republican Party in 2022. She has already hinted that GOP county officials could use the new power given to them by the state board to refuse to certify election results.
“Not all elections are certified,” she said at the seven-hour board meeting on Tuesday. “There are ballot battles and there are elections that need to be addressed carefully, and there may be issues that prevent a board from certifying.”
State board member Tindall Ghazal says that Republican officials who have refused to certify election results “are not operating in good faith” and are trying to sow doubt about the legitimacy of elections. “It’s very clear some of the decisions are being driven by partisan interests and there’s a partisan interest in chaos.”
The move to thwart election certification is just one of many disturbing moves recently taken by the board’s MAGA-friendly majority. In another meeting Wednesday, they voted to re-open an investigation into the 2020 results in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County, where Trump and his allies spread lies about “suitcases” of ballots being counted on election night after GOP poll monitors left. As a result of SB202, the state board now has new power to take control of election administration in up to four counties it deems “underperforming,” sparking fears that Republicans will usurp election operations in heavily Democratic areas.
The board is also considering another rule that would allow county election officials to demand to review a long list of election documents before certifying results, which could further undercut efforts to certify elections in a timely manner and another measure that would give partisan poll watchers greater access to monitor the vote counting process—a key demand of election deniers who tried to disrupt the 2020 vote.
“Changing Georgia election rules with under 90 days to go should raise alarms for everyone who values the integrity of elections—these changes can be used by Trump and his allies to obstruct certification of the 2024 election results,” says Max Flugrath, a spokesman for the voting rights group Fair Fight.
Even Republicans who have denounced Trump are doing the bidding of election deniers in the state. In late July, the secretary of state’s office unveiled a new online portal that allows someone to cancel the registration of another voter online if they have allegedly died or moved out of state. Users only need to know a voter’s name, date of birth, and county residence to initiate a cancellation request, and the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or their driver’s license number in order to finalize a cancellation. That very information leaked online after the portal’s rollout, exacerbating concerns about voter privacy. Georgia Senate Democrats said the site “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.”
The portal is particularly worrisome because SB202 explicitly green-lit unlimited challenges to voter eligibility and right-wing activists challenged the registrations of roughly 100,000 people during the 2022 midterms. The Georgia legislature made it even easier to launch mass voter challenges this year, sparking fears that more voters could be wrongly removed from voter rolls. ProPublica reported that there have already been attempts to cancel the registrations of Raffensperger and far-right GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene using the new online tool.
Georgia is once again a toss-up state, as the latest projections show Kamala Harris pulling even with Trump. But the election deniers who have been empowered after 2020 are doing everything they can to rig the rules to prevent a Democrat from winning the state again.
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