Republican lawmakers included a provision in Georgia’s voting reform law that strips the secretary of state of some power over elections — a move Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent, says is “retribution” for the aftermath of 2020.
The measure, included in legislation that has sparked an intense national debate, removed the secretary of state as the chairman of the powerful State Election Board and replaced him with an appointee to be selected by the state Legislature, which is controlled by the GOP.
“I don’t support it,” Raffensperger, a Republican, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
“Obviously, the secretary of state has been the chair of the State Election Board since 1960, and in a moment of retribution, I was stripped of that,” Raffensperger said. “And now, you’ll have an unelected person. That’s an awful lot of power to give an unelected person of a very important board.”
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Georgia’s law gave the State Election Board even more power than it had previously wielded. Under the new reforms, the board can intervene in counties where local officials have failed to correct “long-term problems of lines, problems with processing of absentee ballots, and other challenges in administration.”
Counties in prior elections had autonomy over how they administered their elections.
Raffensperger found himself in former President Donald Trump’s crosshairs late last year after Trump claimed repeatedly and without proof that fraud cost him a victory in Georgia. A phone call between the two men, in which Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes, became the center of a political firestorm in January and served as evidence in Trump’s subsequent impeachment trial.
Trump and his allies publicly accused Raffensperger of doing too little to look into their unfounded allegations of widespread fraud.
The secretary of state maintained throughout Trump’s pressure campaign that the elections were conducted securely. In several counties, Georgia officials performed hand recounts, machine recounts, and an audit of signature matching. None changed the results.
Raffensperger said his office, despite overseeing the state’s elections, was not invited to help shape the final piece of legislation.
“We were not asked to really be part of it after what happened after the 2020 elections,” he said. “But now, here we are, and we’re now speaking about the good parts of the bill.”
Prior to the bill’s passage, however, Raffensperger said he expressed opposition to the provision concerning the State Election Board.
“We had an opportunity to weigh in, and our position on that was very clear,” he said. “But at the end of the day, that’s what got passed.”
Democrats have vilified the reforms as a more severe reincarnation of Jim Crow — inspiring lawsuits, boycotts, and national outrage.
In reality, the law expands access to voting in many ways. Georgia voters now have additional days to cast their ballots early and the permanent option to use ballot drop boxes, which the state authorized only on an emergency basis in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Other provisions, such as voter ID requirements for requesting absentee ballots and a shorter window for voting by mail, have driven claims that the law restricts voting.
Raffensperger said he supports most measures that made it into the final version of the bill but argued the changes to the State Election Board could be remembered as a mistake.
“That got added along the way, and it’s unfortunate that it did,” he said. “I think that it’ll come to be looked at in future time as that was not really a very well-thought-out, well-reasoned measure because at the end of the day … the State Election Board chairman is not accountable to the voter.”
Raffensperger also said he had hoped to see the law eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, which has been in place in Georgia since 2005. No-excuse rules allow voters to request a mail-in ballot without providing a reason; some states require their voters to provide an excuse, such as being physically outside the state during the election, in order to be eligible to vote by mail.
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“I actually wanted to make sure that we moved away from no-excuse absentee voting because it places tremendous burdens on the county,” Raffensperger said. “But what ended up going through was no-excuse absentee voting … But as I’ve said, if you look at on balance, it’s a fine piece of legislation.”
