ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, is once again attacking his primary opponent, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, over 2020 election issues, this time exercising his legislative authority.
Jones, a close ally of President Donald Trump, appeared to be trying to galvanize his right-wing supporters by demanding that Raffensperger appear before Thursday’s state Senate Ethics Committee meeting so Jones and his supporters could grill Raffensperger about what they falsely claim were 315,000 incorrectly certified votes in Fulton County in 2020.
Tensions were heightened when Republican state senators introduced a resolution requiring Raffensperger to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice request for detailed voter data, including names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Raffensperger said that would violate state law and invade the privacy of Georgians. Georgia is one of 23 states the Justice Department has sued to obtain this information.
Jones’s efforts signal that he hopes to win the nomination for Raffensperger by focusing on the 2020 election and directing public anger toward Raffensperger, confusing some Republican strategists who say most Georgians have already moved on.
Ricky Hess, chairman of the Paulding County Republican Party in northern Georgia, said in a text that voters care about election transparency but are “ready to move on from renewed litigation in 2020” and are more worried about affordability, education and public safety.
“Candidates who make 2020 their centerpiece may be in trouble,” Hess wrote. “Talk about practical steps to build confidence, and then candidates who focus on today’s issues will connect with more people.”
Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In a January 2021 phone call, the president pressed Raffensperger to help “find” enough votes to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
Georgia Republican Jason Shepherd said Jones has received support from Trump and support from election skeptics. Shepherd resigned from the party over disagreements with Trump supporters. He needs to win over other voters, and Sheppard said most people believe Georgia’s elections are secure.
Fulton County back in spotlight
Jones was one of 16 Georgia Republicans to declare themselves as 2020 electors, even though Biden won the state. He also backed calls for a special session to declare Trump the winner. Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Kahl, Jones’ main rivals for the Republican nomination, rebuffed Trump’s efforts. Raffensperger and Kahl will appeal to more moderate Republicans, but Raffensperger is expected to pull ahead of Kahl.
Last year, an outcry over false claims that Fulton County votes had been incorrectly certified went viral in right-wing media. In announcing the Ethics Commission meeting, Jones said Fulton County’s admission that “poll workers did not properly sign 315,000 ballots” was inaccurate. Georgia’s ballots were never signed.
Ann Brumbaugh, the county attorney, acknowledged at last month’s State Board of Elections meeting that the county’s poll workers failed to sign tabulation tapes on the scanners used to count votes during early in-person voting in the 2020 election. She added that the county has new leadership to oversee elections and has implemented new training and procedures for checking tabulation tapes.
Raffensperger called what happened a “clerical error.” Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center, agreed with that assessment. She said signing the tally tape was not how votes were counted and the error did not invalidate the election results.
“There is nothing in election law that would overturn election law for failure to follow procedural rules, specifically invalidating every early vote in Georgia’s largest county,” a spokesman for Raffensperger said.
Jones said in the announcement that Raffensperger’s office needs oversight.
“I will not allow the secretary of state and his allies in the media to evade responsibility by downplaying this utter failure as a mere ‘clerical error,'” Jones said.
Raffensperger said during the campaign that Georgia’s elections were considered safe nationally. Raffensperger’s office said in a letter to the chair of the ethics committee that it provided Georgia’s voter list to the Justice Department and complied to the extent permitted by Georgia law. His office filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Wednesday.
“If you and your colleagues wish to weaken legal protections for Georgia voters’ private information and leave millions of Georgians vulnerable to identity theft, then you can certainly change the law, but that is not something the Secretary of State’s Office supports,” the letter said.
Why run in 2020?
Dr. Jennifer McCoy, a political science professor at Georgia State University, said with Trump frequently expressing regrets about the 2020 election and focusing on Fulton County, where he was sued for trying to overturn the election results, it’s not surprising that Jones wants to bring the matter to voters’ attention.
Jones will have to appeal to a broad base of voters in the general election, but McCoy noted that Democrats previously voted for Raffensperger for secretary of state in the Republican primary.
State Republican Party Chairman Josh McQueen said election security is a “major concern” among Republican primary voters and candidates will continue to talk about the issue.
Sheppard said he was surprised that a “bureaucratic mistake” could so galvanize the Make America Great Again wing of the party. Garland Favorito, a conservative activist known for embracing conspiracy theories and challenging the state’s 2020 results, said Fulton County’s mistake was just one example of what he called a lack of transparency from Raffensperger.
Republicans like Jones “think that if they can win all the polls at Republican barbecues, they might win the nomination, but more often than not, the opposite happens,” Shepard said.
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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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Cramon is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
