Feud between Raffensperger and the State Election Board heats up
The strained relationship between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the State Election Board is fraying.
The latest divide came last week when the board, which Democrat and Republican state lawmakers have described as dysfunctional, found out that secretary of state investigators would no longer attend board meetings to present cases.
“We have members just openly attacking the secretary of state and their staff,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the only Democratic appointee on the board. “At that point, we basically no longer have a cooperative relationship with him.”
Raffensperger’s office said they were tired of seeing their investigators being abused by board members and blamed for the board’s inaction. But board member Janelle King said that Raffensperger should at least send someone to meetings to answer questions about the investigations before the board rules on them.
Relations between the state board and Raffensperger, a Republican candidate for governor in 2026, have been strained amid the board’s infighting, disagreements on election processes and criticisms of secretary of state officials.
The unelected five-person board is comprised of four Republicans and one Democrat, but often, the Republican chair and sole Democrat find themselves at odds with the remaining three members, who are aligned with President Donald Trump and have pushed partisan agendas and grievances over the 2020 election.
The board is tasked with creating election rules, investigating cases of election fraud and making legislative recommendations. For years, that work was noncontroversial and low-profile, but that changed with Trump’s pressure to find enough votes to overturn the 2020 presidential election. State lawmakers passed a bill removing him as the chair of the State Election Board in 2021. In 2024, he was ousted from the board.
Ghazal, the board’s longest-serving current member, said the relationship between the two entities wasn’t always as strained as it is today.
It was “quite close and collaborative” at one point, she said. “We worked very closely with their office for rulemaking, for investigations and for understanding the elections processes.”
Highlighting the strained relations, she pointed to criticisms from board members targeting secretary of state officials and the board’s platforming of activists spreading unsubstantiated election claims.
The board gave time at last week’s meeting to Garland Favorito, co-founder of the group VoterGA, which opposes the state’s touchscreen voting system and has made unsubstantiated claims about counterfeit ballots being used in 2020. In a presentation, he explained why he thinks Georgia’s voting machines should be scrapped, saying the system has security vulnerabilities.
But there’s no evidence that voting machines have ever been hacked during an election.
The meeting was also marked by criticisms of a report about an online fundraiser for Vice Chair Janice Johnston’s legal defense, which raised more than $30,000 for a suit that was settled during the meeting. Under the agreement, the board will be required to pay $50,000 in state funds to the Washington-based watchdog group that brought the suit. Johnston did not respond to a request for comment.
Ed Lindsey, a former Republican board member, said during his tenure on the board, the two entities had a mutually respectful, arm’s-length relationship.
“We did not always agree, but I felt the folks at the SOS office were trying to do the right thing and believed they thought the same of us,” he said.
In an interview, King, whose husband is running for secretary of state, called the relationship between the board and the office discouraging.
“It feels like every time we ask for something from the secretary of state’s office, or we ask them to adjust their control over certain aspects of the process, they punish us,” she said.
King said when she reaches out to their office, she’s often left with unhelpful responses.
“It was strained when I got there, and it continues to be strained,” said King, who was appointed in May 2024.
She also expressed her frustrations about board Chair John Fervier communicating with the secretary of state without including other members.
When House Speaker Jon Burns appointed the conservative media personality to the board, King became the swing vote that, along with two other members of the board’s right-wing majority, passed a series of last-minute election rule changes ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Georgia Supreme Court struck down some of those rules and said the unelected board cannot make changes that go beyond state law.
Amid the board’s efforts last year, Raffensperger warned that the changes could undermine voter confidence and burden election workers.
“I’m sure if I vote more in the direction that they (the secretary of state’s office) would want me to vote in, I’m pretty sure that would strengthen the relationship,” King said.
Fervier said the Legislature has decided the board needs to become more independent. State lawmakers in 2023 made the State Election Board’s budget separate from the secretary of state’s office.
He said the secretary of state’s office becoming less involved at board meetings is just a furtherance of state lawmakers’ intent.
“They’ve allowed us to hire our own investigators, our own staff, and that’s just another step down the road of us becoming more independent,” Fervier said.
But there will always be some partnership between the two entities, he said.
The board is scheduled to hear a long list of investigations next month in an effort to address its backlog, this time without secretary of state investigators to take questions. It appears unlikely the relationship will have warmed by then.
“We have been doing the majority of their work for them, despite the budget and staff they have received from the General Assembly to support themselves,” said Charlene S. McGowan, general counsel for the secretary of state’s office.
About the Author
Caleb Groves is a general assignment reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's politics team and a Kennesaw State University graduate.
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