Georgia voting rights advocates are encouraging members of the public who oppose recent changes to the state’s election rules to make their voices heard at Gov. Brian Kemp’s office and during the next State Election Board meeting on Sept. 20.
Three Donald Trump-supporting members of the State Election Board — Janelle King, Rick Jeffares, and Janice Johnston — have faced widespread criticism from the voting rights community for approving new election rules less than three months before the Nov. 5 general election matchup between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Democrats and some Republicans — including Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — have sounded the alarm.
The proposed rules include allowing county election board members to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results in November and requiring ballots be hand-counted to ensure their totals match the number of people who voted on Election Day, a stipulation metro Atlanta election board leaders have complained may be impossible to complete within six days, as required by state law.
The rule changes violate state ethics guidelines, according to multiple election law experts and Democratic lawmakers, who filed a related lawsuit on Monday after calling on Kemp to force the three State Election Board members who approved the changes to step down.
Kemp has sought clarification from Attorney General Chris Carr as to whether the governor has the power to take action against the board members, who Trump named and called “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” during a recent campaign rally in Atlanta.
Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo says these rule changes could disproportionately impact Black Georgia voters. She added that people who oppose the rule changes are not powerless to stop them, and advocated for folks to contact Kemp’s office and let him know where voters stand on the matter.
“Call Governor Kemp and tell him to shut down the certification challenges at the State Election Board,” Groh-Wargo told reporters during a Wednesday morning press conference. “You can also submit public comment to the State Election Board, and we’ve been doing big pushes on public comment.”
Georgia residents can submit public comments for the next State Election Board meeting via email at SEBPublicCommments@sos.ga.gov. They can also attend the State Election Board meeting in person inside the state Capitol on Sept. 20.
A pro-Trump conspiracy?
Fair Fight Action says Georgians who believe Trump’s claims about widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election have spent the past four years making their voices heard at State Election Board meetings and inside the Gold Dome.
That push led to the passage of controversial election integrity laws like Senate Bill 202 and Senate Bill 189. It also motivated State Election Board members to approve rule changes in recent weeks that critics argue will create legal chaos on Election Day.
That’s exactly what Trump and his supporters want, according to a recent Rolling Stone report that notes similar efforts by pro-Trump operatives to take control of county election boards in other battleground states.
Emails between some pro-Trump election board members and their contacts, which were obtained by Rolling Stone, show a coordinated effort to disrupt the election certification process. The apparent goal, according to multiple voting rights advocates, may be to take the election out of voters’ hands and put it into the hands of courtroom judges — the same thing that happened in Bush v. Gore in 2000.
“It’s very likely that these issues end up before the Supreme Court,” attorney Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, who specializes in election law, told reporters on Wednesday. “The question is whether that happens sooner rather than later, whether these issues end up getting resolved before the election or after.”
Lawrence-Hardy said she worked on the Bush v. Gore case during the 2000 presidential election cycle. She acknowledged the current 6-3 conservative lean on the Supreme Court, which, in recent years, has undone decades of legal precedent to rule against federal abortion rights, affirmative action, and the Chevron Doctrine. The latter ruling undermined the power of federal agencies like the FDA and the EPA to regulate major corporations.
The Supreme Court also sided with Trump in its Trump v. United States ruling, which determined a president should receive “presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”
“Skepticism about whether the Supreme Court will uphold and enforce long-standing precedent is understandable in this climate,” Lawrence-Hardy said. “When it comes to certification, however, both the law and the practical realities of administering elections dictate that certification should remain a nondiscretionary function of our officials.”
If pro-Trump county election board members in Georgia refuse to certify election results, Lawrence-Hardy said, a judge could fine them or even throw them in jail.
“Judges have broad discretion, particularly if someone defies a court order, like an order to certify, by holding that person in contempt of court,” she said.
The Black vote in Georgia
The effort to change election rules less than three months before the next presidential election is an attempt by pro-Trump Republicans to undermine the electoral power of Black voters in Georgia, according to Groh-Wargo.
She noted that votes cast in majority-Black Clayton County, which is part of civil rights legend John Lewis’ former congressional district, have been credited with securing Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the Peach State. Biden received more than 94,000 votes in Clayton County in 2020 — nearly 85% of all votes cast in the district. He won Georgia that year by 11,779 votes.
“This is, full stop, an election denial, voter suppression conspiracy meant to set the table to be able to successfully do what they failed to do last time, which was, throw out 11,700 votes of Black Georgians,” Groh-Wargo said. “The public discourse over that winter was about the power of Georgia’s Black voters in the most African American battleground state.”
Vote early — and bring a friend
Groh-Wargo said the most important move for voters to make this fall is to cast their ballots and tell others to do the same. She encouraged Georgia residents to participate in early voting so they have time to correct any problems they may encounter before Election Day on Nov. 5.
Voting rights advocates are encouraging voters to check their voter registration status often online and make sure they’re registered by Georgia’s Oct. 7 deadline. Early voting in this year’s presidential election begins on Oct. 15 and ends on Nov. 1.
