Protecting the voting rights of all Georgians from federal government interference and defending seniors from fraud scams are top priorities for Democratic Secretary of State candidate Penny Brown Reynolds.
The veteran civil rights attorney and former Fulton County state judge, who starred on the Emmy-nominated Family Court with Judge Penny series from 2008-2009, is in a heated race against Republican state Rep. Tim Fleming to succeed Brad Raffensperger as Georgia’s top elections administrator. Fleming has received the backing of President Donald Trump.
“Tim understands that, ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PHOTO VOTER I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!) AND, ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP IN ORDER TO VOTE!” Trump wrote regarding Fleming on Truth Social in July. “The Dumocrats love to CHEAT, and Tim will work tirelessly to Safeguard Georgia’s Elections.”
Brown Reynolds launched her bid last year in response to Republican-led efforts to scrutinize voter access in Georgia. That includes the 2021 enactment of SB 202, the law that reduced absentee ballot drop box access in largely Black Fulton County and allowed tens of thousands of Georgians to have their voter eligibility challenged.
“I was very concerned about what I’ve been watching this last decade with with all of these allegations being used to try to take away the rights of individuals, whether it’s through redistricting or whether it is through trying to pretend that our elections are not free, fair, and accessible,” Brown Reynolds told Capital B Atlanta during a recent phone interview.
The FBI’s seizure of Fulton County’s 2020 election ballots in January in search of evidence to bolster Trump’s baseless “rigged” election claims — as well as the nullification of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act via the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — are also top of mind.
The Supreme Court’s decision made it legal for state lawmakers to draw partisan, political maps that effectively dilute the collective voting power of Black Georgians as long as that dilution isn’t their explicitly stated purpose. Republican state lawmakers declined in June to redraw Georgia’s political maps, but they’re expected to revisit the issue some time after the November election.
“What I have to do is make certain that we do everything in our power so that the federal government does not come and try to take away our right to vote,” she said.
Fleming, a Republican state lawmaker and small-business owner from Covington, has made preserving “election integrity” a central focus in his own secretary of state bid.
Georgia has the sixth-most secure elections in the nation, according to The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025. But Fleming thinks the state’s voter and ballot count-vetting processes aren’t accurate enough. He serves on a special committee created to select an election system that doesn’t rely on QR codes to count votes.
“I do believe we need to go to hand-marked paper ballots,” Fleming told viewers during his Atlanta Press Club debate against Brown Reynolds on Oct. 12. “You go in the precinct, you check into the poll pad, they print your ballot on an on-demand printer, you go mark it as a voter, and then just like you do now, you take it and put [it] in the scanner. And it’s dropped in the ballot drop box.”
Fleming has closely aligned himself with Trump and previously echoed the president’s false claims of voter fraud during and after the 2020 election.
“We need a secretary of state who will protect our elections, help hardworking Georgians get licensed and get into the workforce, and pick up the phone when Georgians call,” Fleming told attendees at a Trump rally aimed at energizing GOP voters in Dalton on Friday. “Nothing else matters if we cannot trust the vote. The rules should be clear. The law should be enforced. Every legal vote must count and only level votes count.”
Fleming did not respond to multiple interview requests from Capital B Atlanta.
If Brown Reynolds wins in November, she’d be the first Black woman elected to serve in the office. Then-Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Robyn A. Crittenden to replace Brian Kemp as secretary of state after Kemp won the governor’s race in 2018.
Brown Reynolds is the odds-on favorite to win the race, according to ElectionsGA and OnPointPolitics, in an election cycle where Republican candidates are facing widespread, anti-Trump backlash, primarily over the economy and the war in Iran.
Early voting in the midterms ends on Oct. 30. So far, Black voters have fueled record turnout during this cycle’s early voting period, according to multiple sources.
Polls are set to open at 7 a.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Read More:
