State Election Board consumed by power struggles, political agendas

The three Republicans who make up the board’s majority — the same ones Trump praised as “pit bulls” at a campaign rally last year — are at war with their Republican chair, whose only support at times comes from the board’s lone Democrat. Members of both political parties have said at legislative hearings the board is “dysfunctional.”

The board’s disputes boiled over Wednesday when the majority’s hand-picked executive director, James Mills, challenged Chair John Fervier to “be a man” and relinquish power over posting meeting schedules online.

Fervier said he would work with the board’s majority, but he said it’s his job to review meeting notices before posting them.

This public argument came after the board’s majority bloc voted to issue a new subpoena for Fulton County’s ballots and ballot envelopes from the 2020 election. A previous subpoena by the board for 2020 election records, delivered to the county on Election Day last year, is tied up in court over the breadth of documents sought and the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars it would cost to gather them. This subpoena could face the same fate.

The board’s dogged effort to continue investigating the 2020 election stems from an investigation that concluded at least 3,000 ballots were scanned twice during the recount. Investigators blamed disorganization and human errors, but the double-scanned ballots didn’t change who won.

Three vote counts showed Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes, and multiple investigations over the years have repeatedly countered allegations of widespread fraud through ballot drop boxes, dead voters or counterfeit ballots.

The board called for Trump’s Justice Department to intervene in its quest for Fulton’s 2020 election records during a previous meeting in July.

The board also debated a rule proposal, introduced by a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats, that would have allowed the board to declare Georgia’s touchscreen voting system is illegal, “impossible” or “impracticable,” triggering a switch to paper ballots filled out by hand.

Ghazal called it a “back end” attempt to phase out Georgia’s voting system without approval of elected lawmakers. Legislators are already considering a statewide conversion to hand-marked paper ballots. The board plans to revise the rule proposal before reconsidering it next month.

Critics of Georgia’s election technology, manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, say voters can’t verify their votes from unreadable QR codes, and they say large touchscreens violate ballot secrecy rights. A state law requires the elimination of QR codes from ballots by July 1, 2026.

But the board didn’t stop there.

Johnston introduced resolutions asking the Georgia General Assembly to end absentee voting except for people who provide a reason they can’t vote in person, require overseas ballots to be received at election offices by 7 p.m. on election day instead of up to three days afterward, and support efforts to require proof of citizenship on federal voter registration applications.

Meanwhile, board member Janelle King, whose husband Kelvin is running for secretary of state, used her position on the board to criticize elected officials for failing to address criticisms of Georgia’s voting system.

“It’s a repeated cycle of people we continue to elect to do nothing, and that is the real problem,” King said. “This should have been done and fixed a long time ago.”

The third member of the Republican majority’s trio, Rick Jeffares, skipped the first day of the board’s meeting when it considered investigations of election wrongdoing or mistakes — the board’s core mission.

A huge investigation backlog accumulated last year when the board spent much of its time debating election rules. In some cases, allegations of double-voting have dragged on so long that they couldn’t be criminally prosecuted. Johnston questioned the secretary of state’s office for failing to present those cases; the secretary of state’s office has said the board is responsible for delays.

Jeffares showed up on the second day of meetings to vote on more polarizing issues. But after a false fire alarm forced everyone to leave the meeting, Jeffares never returned.

A state House study committee is considering what to do about the board during the 2026 session of the Georgia General Assembly. Currently, the chairman is appointed by the governor, two members are chosen by political parties, and two members are selected by the state House and Senate.