While much of the news media is focused this week on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, I’ve got Georgia on my mind. Why? Because the Georgia State Election Board, during its meeting Monday, considered even more rules and amendments to existing rules governing the state’s elections.
Both steps taken by the election board have been roundly criticized as wolves in sheep’s clothing, election administration edition.
Over the last two weeks, as I and others have documented, the board — composed of a Republican chair, three Donald Trump loyalists praised by the former president as “pit bulls,” and a lone Democrat — pushed ahead with two new concerning actions. First, it approved a new rule that allows county election boards to delay certifying their results while conducting “reasonable inquiries.” Then, it voted to direct Georgia’s attorney general to investigate an already-settled complaint about Fulton County’s 2020 ballot tabulation errors. (The state’s AG, Chris Carr, advised the board before its vote that reopening a complaint would be unlawful and released a formal written opinion Monday stating the board has no right to direct him to conduct any such investigation.)
Both steps taken by the election board have been roundly criticized as wolves in sheep’s clothing, election administration edition: They are seemingly neutral processes, implemented in Georgia counties. In reality, they’re intended to prevent the certification of some counties’ or even statewide results.
Yet, the Georgia Election Board was hardly content to stop there. At Monday’s meeting, it approved an amendment to an existing rule proposed by Cobb County GOP Chair Salleigh Grubbs. As laid out in Grubbs’ petition, the amendment requires county boards to conduct a precinct-by-precinct “reconciliation” of votes in which they must “compare the total number of ballots cast to the total number of unique voter ID numbers.” It further requires that if there is any discrepancy between the two, no matter how small or non-outcome-determinative, an investigation must be launched. “No votes shall be counted from that precinct” until the results of that investigation are presented to a county board, the petition states.
But that’s not all. The so-called Grubbs Rule also empowers county-level election commissioners to “examine all election-related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.” That lesser-known feature of the rule has been flagged to me by voting rights lawyers and activists as not just a way to delay or withhold certification, but more significantly, a potential means to collect “evidence” to perpetuate another “big lie” should Vice President Kamala Harris win the presidential election in Georgia.
Throughout the public comments during Monday’s meeting, Georgia election workers from counties all over the state, interested residents and civil rights advocates all raised concerns that the Grubbs Rule would prevent counties from reporting results by the time required by state law. Instead, the rule “would set 159 counties up for failure,” as one election worker noted.
Nevertheless, proponents of the rule suggested that all they are doing is ensuring compliance with existing Georgia code. Former Homeland Security official and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli even tried to distance the reconciliation proposal from the 2020 election interference scheme, suggesting “the other side was complaining in 2016 … and it’s whoever loses complains.” Sadly for Cuccinelli, however, the ultraconservative “voter fraud conspiracy” group True the Vote, which has been focused lately on challenging voter registrations in multiple states, dropped the ruse. In a celebratory tweet, the group praised the Georgia election board for establishing “a common sense audit trail” in passing the Grubbs Rule. That there will be a need for an audit in any specific Georgia county, much less all of them, is simply assumed. And so, Georgians barrel toward a November election where their election board has approved a series of arcane, but dangerous, procedures aimed at avoiding county-level certification and fueling tales of fraud and woe. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been stripped of his role on the board, and short of certifying the state’s results without wayward counties, may be unable to do much. It’s not clear Carr or Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp can stop the board either (although Kemp has received a complaint from the former Fulton County Election Board chair asking him to remove three board members for their unlawful conduct). Will Georgia’s courts ultimately be the state’s best hope for timely and fair elections? Watch this space.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
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