ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Lt. Gov. Bert Jones, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, is attacking his primary opponent, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, again in the 2020 election, this time using his legislative powers.
In what appears to be an effort to rally his right-wing supporters, Jones, a close aide of President Donald Trump, has demanded that Raffensperger appear before a state Senate ethics committee meeting Thursday so Jones and his supporters can grill Raffensperger on the 315,000 to 315,000 proven false.
Adding to the tension, a Republican state senator filed a motion calling on Raffensperger to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice request for detailed voter data that includes names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Raffensperger says that violates state law and violates the privacy of Georgians. Georgia is one of 23 states the Justice Department has sued to obtain that information.
Jones’ efforts indicate that he hopes to spotlight the 2020 election and direct public anger toward Raffensperger, who will earn the nomination, surprising some Republican strategists who say most Georgians have moved on.
Paulding County Republican Chairman Ricky Hayes of North Georgia said in a text that voters care about election transparency but are “ready to move on from the 2020 rerun” and are more concerned about affordability, education and public safety.
“Candidates who take center stage in 2020 risk being stuck,” Hayes wrote. “Candidates who talk about practical steps to build confidence and then focus on today’s issues will connect with more people.”
Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In a January 2021 phone call, the president pressed Raffensperger to help him “find” enough votes to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
Jones already has Trump’s support and the support of electoral skeptics, said Georgia Republican Jason Shepherd, who resigned from party office due to disagreements with Trump supporters. It’s the remaining voters he needs to win over, and Shepherd is very confident that Georgia’s elections are safe.
Back in the Fulton County Spotlight
Jones was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who declared themselves electors in 2020 despite Biden winning the state. He also supported calling for a special session to declare Trump the winner. Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr, Jones’ top rivals for the Republican nomination, rejected Trump’s efforts. Raffensperger and Carr will appeal to more moderate Republicans, but Raffensperger is expected to pull ahead of Carr.
Outrage over false claims that Fulton County ballots were falsely certified went viral in the right-wing media last year. In announcing the ethics committee meeting, Jones said Fulton County admitted that “315,000 ballots were not properly signed by poll workers,” which is not accurate. Ballots are never signed in Georgia.
An attorney for the county, Ann Brumbaugh, admitted at a state Board of Elections meeting last month that poll workers in the county failed to sign the tabulator tape from the scanner used to count votes during early in-person voting for the 2020 general election. He said the county has new leadership overseeing elections and has implemented new training and procedures to check tabulator tapes.
Raffensperger called what happened a “clerical error.” Gori Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center, agreed with that assessment. Signing the tabulation tape is not how the vote is counted, and an error does not invalidate the election results, she said.
“There’s nothing to overturn this because it doesn’t follow a procedural rule in the election code, especially one that invalidates every single early vote in Georgia’s largest county,” a Raffensperger spokesman said.
Jones said in the announcement that Raffensperger’s office needs oversight.
“I will not allow the secretary and her allies in the press to avoid accountability by reducing this complete failure to a mere ‘clerical error,'” Jones said.
During his campaign, Raffensperger has said Georgia’s elections are nationally recognized as safe. In a letter to the chairman of the ethics committee, Raffensperger’s office said they provided the Georgia voter rolls to the DOJ and complied to the extent permitted by Georgia law. His office demanded that the case be dismissed on Wednesday.
“If you and your colleagues want to weaken legal protections for the private information of Georgia voters and put millions of Georgians at risk of identity theft, you can certainly change the law, but that is not something the Secretary of State’s office supports,” the letter said.
Why run again in 2020?
While Trump often lamented the 2020 election by focusing on Fulton County, where he was accused of trying to overturn the results, it’s not surprising that Jones wants to keep it on voters’ radars, said Georgia State University political science professor Dr. Jennifer McCoy said.
Jones will have to appeal to a large number of voters in the general election, but McCoy noted that Democrats previously passed on voting for Raffensperger for secretary of state in the Republican primary.
State GOP Chairman Josh McCune said election security is a “main concern” among Republican primary voters and that candidates will continue to talk about it.
Shepherd said he was surprised that a “bureaucratic error” was making the party’s MAGA wing as strong as it was. Garland Favorito, a conservative activist known for espousing conspiracy theories and challenging the state’s 2020 results, said the Fulton County error was just one example of what he described as Raffensperger’s lack of transparency.
Republicans like Jones “think if they can win all the straw polls at a Republican Party barbecue, they’re going to win the nomination, generally speaking, it’s the other way around,” Shepherd said.
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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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Kramon is a corps member for reporting at the Associated Press/U.S. Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that lets journalists report on issues hidden in local newsrooms.
