As Election Day rapidly approaches, the Republican-controlled election board of Georgia, a crucial swing state, just increased the chances of a disputed outcome.
In a narrow vote on Aug. 6, the board’s Republican majority empowered county election officials , most of whom are partisan appointees, to launch inquiries into election results in the days immediately following Election Day.
And on Monday, the board passed another new rule permitting individual county board members to demand access to “all election-related documentation” and mandating that county boards resolve any discrepancies before certifying results.
Georgia’s elections have been a battlefield ever since Donald Trump lost the state by less than 12,000 votes in 2020. On Jan. 2, 2021, the outgoing president pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find 11,780 votes,” or one more than he needed to overcome Joe Biden’s margin of victory. Raffensperger refused, and a Fulton County grand jury later indicted Trump and 18 other defendants for crimes related to attempting to overturn the election in a case that is ongoing.
Critics worry that Georgia’s Republican election officials are laying the groundwork to again sow doubt about the results of the presidential election in a critical swing state, and that the new language is a vaguely defined expansion of county boards’ official duties.
Georgia state law says county boards “shall” certify election results. Previously, this involved essentially ministerial actions — consisting of tallying the ballots, sending the results to the state and reporting any issues to law enforcement. Now, with the new rules saying county boards may pursue a “reasonable inquiry” of the results and have access to troves of documents , concerns abound that individual, partisan appointees to election boards could delay results and introduce skepticism about the legitimacy of the election.
Dexter Wimbish, a Democrat and member of the Spalding County election board, told HuffPost he believed Republicans would use the new rules to raise questions about the effectiveness and security of election machines “in case they don’t get the outcome that they’re looking for.”
“I can see a number of election boards failing to certify the election, and throwing it into litigation, as a way to prolong that process” if Trump doesn’t win, Wimbish said.
Such delays could have major implications. If Republicans in Congress attempt to block the certification of a Kamala Harris win — as they did with Biden on Jan. 6, 2021 — Georgia could yet again form the foundation of a challenge to the overall election results.
At least one national figure seems to know the stakes: Last week, Trump himself praised three members of the Georgia State Election Board by name during a campaign rally in Atlanta, calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.” Three days later, those same members formed a 3-2 majority to pass the new rule changing the definition of election “certification” in Georgia.
“Georgia is the only state that has adopted rules to make it easier for county officials to subvert elections, and it’s deeply problematic,” said Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of several watchdog groups to come out against the rule changes. Sus spoke against the “reasonable inquiry” rule in person during a multihour hearing earlier this month.
“And even if they don’t succeed,” Sus added, “they are eroding trust in the electoral process, and doing a disservice to the public.”
‘Like A Dog With A Bone’
Each of Georgia’s four most populous counties went for Biden in 2020, helping him wrest the traditionally red state away from Trump and win the White House.
In each of those counties — Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett — at least one Republican election official has since voted against certifying an election. (In the end, none of those efforts were successful.) Several of those officials have close ties to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election or have participated in broader Republican efforts that could undermine confidence in the vote.
Michael Heekin, a Fulton County election board member, first sought the controversial new “reasonable inquiry” rule. “Transparency is critical in our elections,” Heekin said in an email to HuffPost, declining to comment further.
Heekin and Julie Adams, a Republican Fulton County election board member, both voted against certifying the results of the 2024 presidential primary. Adams has reportedly held roles with the Tea Party Patriots, a group that helped stage the Jan. 6 “Stop The Steal” rally that preceded the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and the right-wing Election Integrity Network.
This spring, Adams and Heekin raised questions about who might have had access to ballots as they moved between the polls and counting room and sought related documents, with Adams ultimately suing for documents. America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by Trump’s close allies, is representing her in court. Adams did not respond to requests for comment; reached by phone Monday, she ended the call after a HuffPost reporter identified himself.
In Gwinnett County, Republican election board members have objected to certifying the results of both the 2020 presidential election and the 2024 presidential primary.
Alice O’Lenick, a Gwinnett County election board member who voted against certifying the 2020 election but was outnumbered, later told a group of Republicans it was her mission to get the legislature to change election law in the GOP’s favor.
“I’m like a dog with a bone,” she said in January 2021, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post . “I will not let them end this session without changing some of these laws. They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.” O’Lenick did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Georgia is the only state that has adopted rules to make it easier for county officials to subvert elections, and it’s deeply problematic. Nikhel Sus, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
David Hancock, a Republican county board of elections member in Gwinnett County, voted against certifying the results of the 2024 presidential primary election in his county due to his objections about custody records for certain batches of ballots and poll worker training.
Asked about critics’ concerns that certification disputes could form the basis of a challenge to Georgia or U.S. election results, Hancock told HuffPost there were “too many hypotheticals.”
“As we have seen in 2016, 2020, 2022, both sides can take anything and use it in an attempt to overturn election results they are not pleased with,” he added in an email. “Democrats that I speak with, even some who are on the board with me, are convinced that, as a Republican board member, my purpose is to do everything I can to ensure that only Republicans win. Nothing I can say will change that.”
Hancock said he supported the “reasonable inquiry” rule, noting that state law still required counties to certify election results within a week. But he also pointed to instances where certifications had been delayed or were later recertified. “And, guess what - everything was fine,” he said. As for the new rule giving officials broad access to documentation, he echoed a common talking point: The certification paperwork signed by county boards states that the results are “true and correct,” and election officials should feel confident when they sign that.
“If we certify an election without checking fundamental issues like ballot chain of custody, and a candidate comes in later and challenges the outcome, we are the ones that are on the hook,” Hancock argued. (It’s unclear if any election officials have ever faced criminal or civil liability for certifying an election result. However, officials have faced charges for delaying election certification, and what’s more, candidates who want to challenge results first need the results to be certified to bring the challenges to court.)
Monday’s Meeting
Monday’s meeting of the state election board revealed the national scope of the fight over Georgia’s rules.
Two national power players backed up Bridget Thorne — a Fulton County commissioner who, for years, has spread false claims regarding the 2020 election — as she proposed the documentation rule: Ken Cuccinelli, a senior Homeland Security official in the Trump administration, and Hans von Spakovsky, who for decades has amplified baseless concerns of widespread fraud in American elections. Both men authored entire chapters of Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a potential second Trump administration.
“I would tell you that unless an election official, a board member, has full confidence in the administration of the election that it was done without errors, they should not certify the election,” von Spakovsky said.
Janice Johnston, a Republican commissioner on the state board, read supportive statements from Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who now works at the America First Policy Institute, and former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).
ProPublica reported Sunday that a network of right-wing groups, including the Election Integrity Network, helped put together the documentation rule, which would empower county election board members to investigate discrepancies in precinct-level data — and request vast document troves — before certifying results to be included in the statewide count.
Thorne said during the meeting that the rule was a “collaborative effort” and that “numerous people and numerous groups have had their hands in it.” Experts who spoke to ProPublica noted their particular concern over the rule’s requirement that county boards not count the votes of entire precincts until they’d probed any discrepancies — even, as ProPublica pointed out, innocuous things like people checking into polling places but deciding to leave without voting, or election systems being slow to update corrected provisional ballots.
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the state board’s only Democrat, noted at the meeting that the rule mandates the investigations begin even before all ballots — including military and overseas ballots — are received, leading to a risk of confusion as ballots that are postmarked in time arrive in the days immediately following Election Day.
And John Fervier, the board’s chair, expressed his concern the board was “creating law” by acting outside of its authority. The “documentation” rule passed, just as the “reasonable inquiry” one had — with three Republicans on the state board voting in favor, and Fervier and Ghazal voting against.
One of the Republicans who voted in favor of both rules, Rick Jeffares, has sought a job in the Trump administration. Jeffares told The Guardian recently that he’d told a former Trump campaign adviser “I’d like to have it,” referring to a regional Environmental Protection Agency directorship. Jeffares subsequently accused the media of blowing up a “nothing story” and said he did not talk to anyone in the Trump administration about his request. Jeffares did not return HuffPost’s request for comment.
‘Talk To The State’
The rule changes, especially so close to a monumental presidential election, have some people in Georgia nervous — if only due to the added complication.
“Whenever you’re left with such a vague standard, there is the opportunity for chaos,” said Tori Silas, chair of the Cobb County board of elections. “What one person deems to be ‘reasonable,’ 50 other people will not deem it to be reasonable. We have 159 counties here in the state of Georgia. … You will get potentially 159 different interpretations.”
Zachary Manifold, the supervisor of elections in Gwinnett County — a hired position that answers to the county board — told HuffPost he was confident the county’s board would work together to certify the election. Still, he said, questions remained regarding the new rules. For instance, Georgia law vests power in “election superintendents,” which are defined as the entire county board, not individual members, but the new rule regarding access to election documents refers to individual “board members.”
“We’ve struggled with, ‘Do we have to use the open records process here for this individual board member? Do they have the right to see this document in their [individual] capacity? Or does the whole board have to vote in order for them to see this?’” he said. “That’s kind of the angst that we’ve all been running into. It’s not that anybody here doesn’t want to show these documents. It’s kind of like, what power do you have as a board member, versus the ‘superintendent’?”
Then there’s the even more significant question: What happens if county boards simply don’t certify election results in time for state deadlines? In each of Georgia’s four most populous counties, Biden’s 2020 margin of victory was larger than his statewide margin.
“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to the state about that,” Manifold said. (“Georgia’s Election Integrity Act requires counties to certify the election results by November 12th and we fully anticipate that counties will follow the law,” Raffensperger wrote last week, the day after the state election board passed the “reasonable inquiry” rule.)
Wimbish, the Democrat on the Spalding County election board, had an answer: He’d get a court order. Around the country, such orders — writs of mandamus, directing government officials to do their official duties — have been successfully filed against election officers who refuse to certify elections. (One Spalding County election board member, Roy McClain, voted against certification in November last year.)
Sus, of CREW, told HuffPost the new rules in Georgia could themselves face a challenge sooner than that, as he and other experts have argued they go against the law and over a century of precedent.
“We’re exploring all legal options,” he said. “All options are still on the table.”
The new rules in Georgia, Sus said, pose not only the risk of delaying the certification of election results, but of sowing distrust in those results and being used as a pretext for a sham investigation or claims of wrongdoing. Congress will meet on Jan. 6, 2025, to certify the national presidential results. While the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 raised the bar for objecting to election results in Congress, it did not eliminate objections altogether.
“There’s no guarantee, once we get to the sixth, that members of Congress who previously have cast doubt on the validity of lawful elections will change tact,” Sus said. “If anything, I think we can expect that they’re going to deploy every possible tactic they can to try and invalidate the election if Donald Trump loses.”
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