Connect the Dots 101

An examination of a new election rule in Georgia passed by the state’s Republican-controlled election board suggests that local officials in just a handful of rural counties could exclude enough votes to affect the outcome of the presidential race.

The rule was backed by national groups allied with former President Donald Trump. It gives county boards the power to investigate irregularities and exclude entire precincts from the vote totals they certify. Supporters of the rule, most of whom are Republicans, say it’s necessary to root out fraud. Critics, most of whom are Democrats, say it can be used as a tool to disenfranchise select buckets of voters.

In 2020, Trump’s allies trying to overturn the election quickly realized that the weakest points in America’s election system are its thousands of counties, where the day-to-day work of running elections is done. Previously unreported emails and messages show that one of the first places they targeted was Spalding County.

Spalding, Troup and Ware — voted for Trump in 2020. But each has small yet significant concentrations of Democratic votes clustered in specific precincts. All three also have local election boards that have become stacked in recent years with partisans who’ve voiced support for the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election or have cast doubt on the integrity of the election process.

In the days after the election, Ben Johnson, the owner of a tech company who in 2021 would become chair of the Spalding County election board, began tweeting repeatedly at a team of lawyers challenging the election results on behalf of Trump…

As a result of the 2021 reorganization in Spalding, the election board lost three Black Democrats. Three new white Republicans became the majority — including Johnson, who became chair.

“They definitely wanted us off the board,” said former member Lonnie Hollis, who is worried the new board will behave partisanly this election. She said Republican officials in Troup have connections to the state party.

An analysis by ProPublica shows that counties wouldn’t have to toss out many precincts to tip the election if it’s as close as it was in 2020, when Trump lost Georgia by less than 12,000 votes. Based on tallies from that year, an advantage of about 8,000 Democratic votes could be at risk in just 12 precincts in three counties under the new rule, the analysis found. There are 159 counties in Georgia.

https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-election-rule-could-exclude-votes