Georgia’s State Election Board Gains Authority To Reject Certifications, Raising Fears Of A Disputed Election

Last week, Georgia’s five-member state election board, overseen by Trump allies and responsible for administrative duties, pushed the limits of their authority by implementing new rules that could challenge the election results, less than 90 days before November’s general election.

The new rule adopted allows election boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, a process traditionally considered mandatory and administrative under Georgia law.

However, the State Election Board did not define what qualifies as a “reasonable inquiry” and suggested that, contrary to Georgia law’s clear requirement for counties to certify results by Nov. 12, such inquiries could allow them to delay certification indefinitely.

Following the State Election Board’s vote last Tuesday, they reconvened the next day to revisit a complaint known as SEB 2023-025.

The complaint alleges ballot tabulation issues, including the double counting of around 3,000 ballots in Fulton County during the November 2020 presidential election.

In May, the board resolved the complaint by reprimanding Fulton County for the errors and appointing independent election monitors for the upcoming general election.

However, last Wednesday, despite strong objections from board chair John Fervier, a Republican appointee of Gov. Brain Kemp, and the board’s only Democrat, Sara Tindall Ghazal, the three remaining members reopened the complaint and voted to refer it to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R).

After the Georgia State Election Board’s vote, former President Donald Trump praised the three members over the weekend for their “courage” and shared a six-minute video of the vote on his Truth Social platform.

He urged Attorney General Carr, Gov. Kemp, and GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “get moving on this” and emphasized, “We can’t can’t let this happen again. We must win Georgia 2024.”

In the clip Trump shared, Janelle King, one of the members he praised, reacted to Fervier’s repeated warnings that the board’s actions might violate state law by joking that if the meeting were a drinking game based on his warnings, they’d all be drunk. 

Fervier’s warnings were based on advice from the Georgia attorney general’s office, which had been tasked with conducting a new investigation and had informed him that reopening the complaint would be unlawful.

King, a recent board addition chosen after her predecessor, Ed Lindsey, resigned following his opposition to no-excuse mail-in voting and his vote against referring the Fulton County complaint to the state attorney general, nonetheless argued, despite her inexperience, that referring the complaint was the right decision.

Although the state’s secretary of state typically oversees election board decisions, Raffensperger, a Trump adversary, has little influence due to the Georgia Legislature’s removal of him as a voting member of the Georgia Election Board after the 2020 election.

During the recent legislative session, the Georgia Legislature passed additional measures removing Raffensperger from the board entirely and authorizing the board to investigate him.

Despite the Georgia election board’s apparent disregard for state law, Raffensperger has remained focused on election security. However, with his diminished influence, litigation may be the only effective way to address the board’s recent actions.

On Wednesday, he partnered with the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to host a “tabletop exercise” for local election and IT officials, aiming to enhance the physical and cybersecurity of Georgia’s vote this November.