Dem
51
GOP
49
It is bad enough to allow politicians to pick the people who administer elections. Even worse is to allow political parties to make those decisions. And yet, that's the approach that Georgia uses. The Georgia State Election Board is made up of five people, three of whom are new appointees chosen by the Georgia legislature in consultation with the Georgia Republican Party. And you'll just be stunned to learn what happened—the three new appointees have emerged as a Trumpy bloc, and are working to make the election more Trump-friendly.
To be more specific, the legislature made several changes to the Board, removing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and two other members. The vacancies this created were filled with three MAGA Republicans, folks who are so MAGA that they were mentioned by name by Donald Trump at a rally in Georgia. And the MAGA trio has pushed through several last-minute changes to election rules, most importantly allowing election officials to conduct a "reasonable inquiry" into election results before certifying them and also permitting county election boards to investigate ballot counts. The obvious purpose here is to create delays and uncertainty, in the event that Trump loses the state (again).
Yesterday, several Democratic groups, with the backing of the Harris-Walz campaign, filed suit in Georgia state court. What the blue team is asking for is a ruling that election officials cannot initiate investigations of their own volition, and that they must get a court order, or else must certify the results in a timely manner. If this can't be resolved at the state level, then the Democrats will head to federal court next.
Meanwhile, and here's the "strange bedfellows" part, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) is also looking into the matter. His first election as governor came in an election that featured some screwiness, screwiness that was largely ignored by the then-Georgia Secretary of State, who was... Brian Kemp. Since then, however, he's become much more committed to election integrity. And while he did not join in the lawsuit the Democrats filed yesterday, he did ask Georgia AG Christopher M. Carr (R) to look into the question of whether Kemp has the power to remove the three MAGA election board members.
We'd say this story is double good news. First, Georgia is the swing state where shenanigans are most plausible, given that it has a Republican trifecta. And yet, shenanigans are running into headwinds, even there. Second, more broadly, the guardrails of democracy are trying mightily to hold. Hopefully they do. (Z)