Following the 2020 election, Donald Trump made a concerted effort to disregard the voters’ verdict and remain in office, even if it meant fomenting violence and blocking a peaceful transfer of power.
Yes, he failed, but there are many lessons to be learned from failure. Trump and his allies have tested the integrity of our electoral system in a way no one in American history has dared to do, and in doing so they have found out where it is weak and where it is strong. They have learned how and where to strike next time, and here in Georgia they have put those lessons into action with great dedication.
In 2020, for example, Trump and his co-conspirators learned that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was more loyal to the Constitution, to fairness, and to the facts than Trump. They also realized that if they couldn’t remove Raffensperger as Secretary of State, they could at least strip him of some of his power. And that’s exactly what they did.
In 2020, for example, Raffensperger served as chairman of the State Board of Elections, the appointed body charged with conducting “fair, legal, and orderly elections.” He and other members of the board at the time, Republicans and Democrats alike, were reasonable, responsible, fact-based citizens who took the mission of honest elections seriously.
That’s over. Thanks to legislation passed by Trump’s allies in the state legislature, Raffensperger was removed from the Electoral College. Other members were removed as well, ultimately leaving control of the college to a three-member MAGA majority that is committed not to free and fair elections, but to elections that Trump can win. Trump himself celebrated these three members by name at a recent rally in Georgia as his “pit bulls” for victory.
In 2020, Trump and his allies also learned the legal significance of certifying an election. Their plan to rig that election by creating fake electors failed because Joe Biden’s victory had already been officially certified. For the same reason, their plan to get Congress to invalidate the Georgia election by making false claims of fraud also failed. So this time, they are trying to use their “pit bull” majority on the state election board to ensure that a potential Kamala Harris victory cannot be easily or quickly certified. They are doing this in a two-step process.
First, they are passing a series of unnecessary, unrealistic and, in some cases, illegal rule changes to the election process at the last minute, despite clear warnings from local election officials that they would “doom 159 counties.” According to the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, these changes will “create unnecessary confusion for both the public and the dedicated poll workers and election officials who are critical to a smooth and efficient election process.”
If these warnings prove to be justified—if county election officials are indeed doomed by rules they cannot realistically follow—then Trump would have the excuse he needs to challenge the election results and delay or stop the certification.
Step two is a direct attack on that certification process. In 2020, county election boards in Georgia had no power to block the final certification of elections. If conservative-dominated county boards were unhappy with the outcome of an election, they had no legal power to challenge, overturn, or delay it. All they could do was certify the numbers by the legally mandated deadline.
State law has not changed in this regard, but the unelected members of the State Election Board are trying to rewrite it in their own bureaucratic way. Using their legislative power, they are telling local boards that they can now refuse to certify results if they doubt the validity of an election for real or imagined reasons.
If an election cannot be certified, there is no official winner. If there is no official winner, alternate electors can come into play, or the state legislature or Congress can be pressured to declare a winner themselves, effectively silencing the voice of Georgia voters. The door is wide open for election tampering.
This is an unacceptable state of affairs. A key state body has gone astray, claiming powers it does not legally have, breaking laws it does not like, and knowingly and intentionally undermining public confidence in elections, the foundation of self-government. And so far, the Georgia Republican leadership, which has handed control of the state election board to Trump’s pit bulls, has been too intimidated by its far-right base to take that control away from them and return it to responsible hands.
This column originally appeared on georgiarecorder.com.
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