raffensperger, brad sos ga

===

gets to rule on MTG?!

AN 7 26

In President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to rig the 2026 midterm elections, he has done everything from target Republicans who refuse to go along with him to delivering a controversial speech claiming to have proof of election fraud that was widely derided by both sides.

Now a Georgia official who Trump targeted for political destruction has written an editorial for a prominent state publication denouncing the president’s claims — while carefully avoiding mentioning him directly.

“In an era when confidence in elections is too often shaped by partisan rhetoric rather than proven results, Georgia has taken a different approach: Build the nation’s gold standard for election administration and prove its success at every election,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote for the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Tuesday. “The recently completed statewide primary and runoff are the latest examples. Millions of Georgians cast their ballots, votes were reported promptly, post-election audits confirmed the results and election officials across all 159 counties once again demonstrated that elections can be secure, accessible, transparent and efficient at the same time.”

He added, “While other states continue debating how elections should work or struggle to produce timely results, Georgia continues proving how they can work.”

After reviewing in detail how Georgia has done its best to ensure voter integrity before every election, Raffensperger argued that Georgians overwhelmingly support his efforts.

“That success is also reflected in public opinion,” Raffensperger said. “A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia poll found that 70 [percent] of likely Democratic primary voters and 77 [percent] of likely Republican primary voters said they were very or somewhat confident that Georgia’s primary election would be conducted fairly and accurately.”

In addition to praising his past achievements, Raffensperger argued that the state is ready for future elections.

“Our rigorous preparation for November is already underway,” Raffensperger argued. “Voting equipment is being tested, poll workers are receiving additional training, cybersecurity protections continue to be strengthened, voter rolls are being maintained in accordance with state and federal law, and state and local officials are coordinating to protect election infrastructure. Mandatory post-election audits, public observation opportunities, and Georgia’s Election Data Hub will once again ensure transparency throughout the election process.”

He ultimately concluded, “Confidence in the system can’t be dictated from above. It is earned through transparency, accountability and results. That’s the standard Georgia has set, and that’s the standard we will continue to uphold.”

Raffensperger famously refused to help Trump “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Georgia’s result during the 2020 presidential election from supporting Trump to Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Trump retaliated by opposing Raffensperger when he ran for reelection as Secretary of State in 2022, although Raffensperger ultimately won his primary and general election despite Trump’s efforts. In 2026, Raffensperger sought the Republican nomination for governor but lost to billionaire Rick Jackson.

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AN 2 26

After the United States' 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump was furious when Joe Biden flipped five states that Trump had carried in 2016: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. And Trump claimed, without evidence, that all of those states were stolen from him through widespread voter fraud.

Trump, in 2026, continues to make that claim, which was repeatedly debunked by vote recounts. And FBI agents recently searched voter records at an election center in Georgia, inspiring some commentators to wonder why Trump targeted that state rather than one of the other four states that Biden flipped in 2020.

Slate's Shirin Ali, in an article published on February 3, lays out some reasons why the Peach State is a high priority for Trump and his allies.

"One big question looming over this entire episode…. is why — of all the states where Trump falsely claimed there was fraud in 2020 — has Georgia become Ground Zero for the president ahead of the 2026 midterms that election experts feel are potentially threatened by Trump's latest actions?," Ali reports. "We think we have a few answers. Those answers have to do as much with 2026 as they do with 2020. And, perhaps surprisingly, a big motivation for Trump's assault on Georgia's election infrastructure now has as much to do with the Republican primaries in the state as with November's general election."

Ali goes on to note that Georgia's gubernatorial race "is considered a toss-up, though Republicans have consistently held the job since 2002."

"Polling has shown the top Republican contenders are Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones," Ali explains. "Trump has endorsed Jones, who served as a fake elector in 2020 and was tied up in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference investigation, which charged Trump and several co-conspirators with a criminal conspiracy to steal Georgia's 2020 election. Jones has focused his campaign on attacking Raffensperger over that election."

The recent FBI search, according to Ali, is connected to the GOP infighting that occurred in Georgia after the 2020 election. Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both conservative Republicans, maintained that Biden won the Peach State fair and square — much to Trump's chagrin.

"As part of this vendetta," Ali writes, "Trump even made Kemp and Raffensperger prime targets during the 2022 elections, trying to inspire his MAGA base to vote them both out of office. At the time, he failed miserably. Now, though, it seems that Trump has found a new way to try to punish Raffensperger. The Trump Administration is undoubtedly going to use the baggage surrounding Georgia's voting system to cast doubt on its 2026 elections and possibly beyond, with the FBI's recent raid evidence that this is already underway."

Ali adds, "Georgia provides a three-for-one, from the Trump perspective: He gets to again question the legitimacy of the 2020 election; he gets to again cast blame on Raffensperger, his 2020 antagonist in the state; and he gets to potentially meddle with an election which he desperately wants Raffensperger to lose."

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===

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2024-campaign-immigration.html

nyt

no lnx

Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”

Once a staid think tank, the Heritage Foundation has recently made its mark seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Ken BensingerRichard Fausset

By Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausset

Sept. 7, 2024

In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote.

Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote.

Although the two men claimed to represent a company helping Latinos navigate the election system, they were actually working with the Heritage Foundation and carrying a hidden camera. Days later, the conservative think tank posted a video on the social media platform X containing some of the footage the men had captured, calling it “staggering” evidence that 14 percent of noncitizens in Georgia — which Heritage said extrapolated to more than 47,000 people — were registered to vote.

“Based on our findings,” the video concluded, “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.”

The video was reposted by Elon Musk, X’s owner, who called it “extremely disturbing.” It quickly went viral.

But under scrutiny, those claims do not hold up. Three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote. A spokesman for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the video “a stunt.”

It was one of several misleading videos that the Heritage Foundation has pumped into social media feeds this year. While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.

At the center of that effort is the Oversight Project, an arm of Heritage that conducts what it describes as investigations into immigration policy, among other topics. Borrowing from covert tactics used by the group Project Veritas, the Oversight Project has published videos about the supposed threat of migrant voting in shelters on the Texas border, in New York City and in North Carolina.

The project says it is preparing to release investigations of other states, including what its executive director, Mike Howell, recently described in a livestream on X as “a pretty big thing” targeting voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

“We view our role in this cause as breaking the bombshell news,” said Mr. Howell. The recording of the livestream appears to have been deleted after The New York Times contacted Heritage for this article, and the Oversight Project has so far not posted any videos about alleged noncitizen voting in Virginia.

Image

An open doorway into a room with a table and chairs. A large “Vote” sign in on the table.

An Atlanta polling location in March. There is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population.Credit...Christian Monterrosa for The New York Times

Few groups have done more to propel the false, but snowballing, theory that noncitizens are preparing to vote in droves in November, threatening the integrity of the election.

Heritage’s most recent effort, the Georgia video, tallied more than 56 million views, according to X’s statistics, and has become fodder for discussion on dozens of right-wing talk shows and podcasts, as well as on Fox News. The day after it was posted, both Mr. Raffensperger and Georgia’s attorney general, Christopher Carr, released statements, apparently in response to the video, pledging to investigate “specific” claims of voter fraud.

But there is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country.

Voting by noncitizens is illegal in almost all jurisdictions except for a few scattered municipalities that allow residents who are not citizens to vote in local elections. Any noncitizen convicted of trying to vote in a federal election faces stiff fines, prison time and potential deportation.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy group that focuses on voting and criminal justice issues, found that one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has said that “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.” The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis found just 23 documented cases of noncitizen voting across the country between 2003 and 2023.

Regardless of the evidence, critics say efforts like the Heritage investigation in Georgia could be used by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to discredit the election results if he loses.

“The immigrant becomes the boogeyman,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on elections law at U.C.L.A. law school. “It provides a means of delegitimizing Democratic victories and creates a path for challenging them.”

Several election experts derided the Oversight Project’s methodology as deeply flawed. The group’s figures suggest it spoke to a total of 50 people — statistically, a tiny sampling — before coming to a determination that one in seven noncitizen residents of Georgia may be illegally registered to vote.

In an email to The Times last week, Mr. Howell stood by the group’s work in Georgia. “I am not surprised that when an individual admits to a crime on camera that they would later retract it when that video is made public,” he said.

Asked about research — including Heritage’s own data — showing how rare noncitizen voting is, he said: “The monumental number of noncitizens that have poured over our borders since 2021 have made any previous ‘study’ of noncitizens’ voting irrelevant.”

In a July interview on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing podcast network, Mr. Howell said that out of 40 people his investigators spoke to at an apartment complex in Charlotte, N.C., four said they were both registered to vote and not citizens. That led the Oversight Project to conclude that 10 percent of noncitizens in that state were most likely registered to vote.

Mr. Howell claimed the Biden administration was planning to “refuse a peaceful transition of power by relying on illegal aliens to vote for them, and that’s clear as day.”

In Georgia, Mr. Raffensperger's investigation into Heritage’s claims is continuing, according to Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Mr. Hassinger said investigators had found no records suggesting that the people who appeared in the video had registered or voted, and “no pending or rejected voter applications from 2024” from the apartment complex.

The state investigators went to the apartment complex and spoke to two of those interviewed by the Oversight Project. One said she purposely gave the men at her door a fake name, and told them what she thought they wanted to hear “to get them away.”

Mr. Hassinger described the Heritage effort as “a stunt,” adding, “There’s no better word for it.”

The Times also spoke with a woman interviewed in the video. The woman, an immigrant from Honduras who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Marta, because she feared being deported, confirmed to the Times that she was not registered to vote and had never tried to register in the nine years that she had lived in the United States.

She had been surprised to see two strangers appear at her door and feared that if she told them the truth — that she was not registered to vote — they might try to register her and ask her to sign documents, potentially putting her at risk with immigration authorities.

Marta said that she had no idea she was being filmed until she was shown the video online and that the two men did not ask for her full name or address. “I just wanted them to go away,” she said.

The woman was first identified by Lead Stories, a private fact-checking group hired by social media platforms to verify content. The group also tracked down two other women who were shown in the video. Both denied having registered to vote.

On social media, the Oversight Project said it had tried to locate the seven people on state voter rolls but was “unable to find them,” adding that “non-citizens have shoddy address history records and often use fake documents and names.”

Founded in 1973, Heritage was long known as a policy shop, focused on promoting conservative, pro-business policies in Washington. In recent years, it has taken a sharp turn under the leadership of Kevin Roberts, an academic who said his goal for Heritage was “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

Mr. Roberts started the Oversight Project just a few months after arriving at Heritage, asking it to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration and “institutional support” to the conservative movement.

The Oversight Project partnered with an outside group, Muckraker, to produce both the Georgia and North Carolina videos. In April, they also teamed up to produce a video about a flier encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden. The groups said the paper was found in a shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, but the founder of the shelter denied being behind it. She said she had received death threats after the video was posted.

In March, the two groups used a hidden camera to film employees of a migrant aid group, La Jornada, that was providing documentation they said could enable noncitizens to register to vote. The executive director of that organization, which is based in Queens, N.Y., later said the document they had provided was not identification that could be used to register to vote.

Anthony Rubin, the founder of Muckraker, in a recent interview on InfoWars, the conspiracy spreading podcast hosted by Alex Jones, said that “anybody who claims this isn’t happening, they’re just burying their head in the sand.”

In March 2022, Mr. Raffensperger announced the results of a statewide audit that determined that 1,634 noncitizens had tried to register to vote among all of Georgia’s registered voters at the time, and had been blocked from doing so by existing state verification procedures. He also noted that none of them had cast ballots.

“So, my fellow Georgians asked me, ‘Are noncitizens voting in Georgia?’” Mr. Raffensperger said in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I can say, ‘No, they aren’t,’ because we’ve checked it.”

Ken Bensinger covers right wing media and national political campaigns for The Times. More about Ken Bensinger

Richard Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. More about Richard Fausset

===

an 8 24

In the critical battleground state of Georgia, voting rights advocates are warning that a new website launched by the state's top elections official will be exploited by bad-faith groups seeking to disenfranchise voters.

USA TODAY recently reported that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger (R) is rolling out a web portal that will allow anyone to request a voter's registration be purged from the state's rolls. The Georgia Voter Registration Cancellation Portal was meant to be a tool for former residents of the Peach State to take themselves off of Georgia's list of registered voters in the event they move, or for family members to remove a deceased relative's name from the database.

Raffensberger said the site will "help keep Georgia’s voter registration database up-to-date without having to rely on postcards being sent and returned by an increasingly inefficient postal system." In order to request the removal of a voter's registration, the portal requires a user put in a voter's first initial, last name, county, date of birth and either the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number or their driver's license number.

However, the site's security was compromised due to a software update that temporarily made voters' personal information like date of birth, drivers license number and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers publicly available. The Georgia Secretary of State's office attributed the issue to a "glitch" caused by a URL routing error, which they said was corrected within an hour.

But now, voting rights advocates say that the site can be used by malicious actors to purge legally registered voters from the system ahead of the November election.

"This portal is ripe for abuse,” Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye — the executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia — said in a statement. “[T]his page is yet another move in Georgia Republicans’ playbook to empower anti-democracy activists, and the Secretary of State must take it down immediately.”

The Georgia Voter Cancellation Portal was created on the heels of the Peach State's Republican-dominated legislature passing Senate Bill 189 this year, which effectively streamlined the process for a voter's registration to be challenged. USA TODAY referred to Senate Bill 189 as a "counterpart" to the controversial Senate Bill 202, which passed in 2021 and allowed for one person to challenge an unlimited number of voter registrations. That bill was notably passed after President Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win Georgia's electoral votes in roughly 30 years, and after Georgia voters elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate.

READ MORE:['No evidence': Fox host shreds Trump and Mike Johnson's 'null and void' voter fraud claims

Raffensberger claimed the website was necessary in order to prevent "voter fraud," though numerous investigations have found that actual voter fraud happens very rarely and never at a scale that could change the result of an election.

In 2023, the Washington Post analyzed voter fraud investigations in Republican-controlled states, like Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia and found that out of tens of millions of ballots cast since 2020, prosecutors only secured 47 convictions for voter fraud. And between 2000 and 2014, Loyola University Law School-Los Angeles professor Justin Leavitt found only 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of more than one billion ballots cast.

Click here to read USA TODAY's report in full.

===

an 8 24

GA attorney general delivers massive blow to Trump backers on state election board

Alex Henderson

===

penn wacko mastriano dominionist but

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/brian-kemp-2657387890/

raffensberger win OVER HICE AM TALIBAN TRUMPISTA

===

2022

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-accuses-georgias-republican-secretary-state-colluding-radical

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/internet-explodes-with-reactions-to-bombshell-senate-judiciary-report-on-trumps-efforts-to-pressure-doj-into-helping-him-overturn-the-election/

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has released a sweeping report detailing how former President Donald Trump and a former high-ranking lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic-led committee's 394-page document contains intricate details about the former president's actions in the days after the presidential election was called for President Joe Biden. A number of bombshell claims were revealed in the report and ⁠— here aresix key takeaways from it.

1. "President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results."

The report reveals Trump asked the Justice Department for assistance in overturning the election a total of nine times. The call history includes details about who Trump spoke with along with dates those calls took place.

December 15, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including incoming Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (both men assumed office when William Barr left on Dec. 23)
December 23, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 24, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 27, 2020 – Trump-Rosen-Donoghue Call
December 28, 2020 – Trump-Donoghue Call
December 30, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 31, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
January 3, 2021 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
January 3, 2021 – Trump-Donoghue Call

2. "White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law enforcement matters."

Between December 29 and January 1, Meadows pushed for Rosen to open an investigation into "at least four categories of false election fraud claims" being circulated by Trump, his campaign team, legal team and other allies. At the time, no substantial evidence of election fraud had been produced to support any of the claims. The report also breaks down the four key categories Meadows pressed Rosen about:

"Investigate various discredited claims of election fraud in Georgia that the Trump campaign was simultaneously advancing in a lawsuit that the Georgia Supreme Court had refused to hear on an expedited basis;

Investigate false claims of 'signature match anomalies' in Fulton County, Georgia, even though Republican state elections officials had made clear "there has been no evidence presented of any issues with the signature matching process."

Investigate a theory known as 'Italygate,' which was promoted by an ally of the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and which held that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes. Meadows also asked DOJ to meet with Giuliani on Italygate and other election fraud claims.

Investigate a series of claims of election fraud in New Mexico that had been widely refuted and in some cases rejected by the courts, including a claim that Dominion Voting Systems machines caused late-night 'vote dumps' for Democratic candidates."

The report also notes that Meadows' actions are in violation of policies that place limitations on communication between White House and DOJ officials in regards to certain law enforcement matters. This policy was put in place after the Watergate scandal.

3. "After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark [former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division] pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump's election subversion scheme — and told Rosen he would decline Trump's potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme."

After having private conversations with Trump, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce an investigation into election fraud and have legislatures in key swing states appoint alternate election officials. The report highlights a draft letter Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on December 28. The letter, which was addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the General Assembly Speaker, and Senate President Pro Tempore, included a number of recommended directives, many of which violated election laws.

In fact, Clark's proposed action, which would have had the DOJ override an already-certified popular vote, was described as "a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority," according to the report:

"The letter was titled "Georgia Proof of Concept" and Clark suggested replicating it in "each relevant state." The letter would have informed state officials that DOJ had "taken notice" of election irregularities in their state and recommended calling a special legislative session to evaluate these irregularities, determine who "won the most legal votes," and consider appointing a new slate of Electors. Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election."

4. "Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."

The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.

They are:

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.): The report indicates that the Republican lawmaker spoke directly to Donoghue about baseless claims of election fraud in his state.
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R): As an avid Trump ally, Mastriano reportedly "spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to provide transportation for Trump supporters to attend the 'Save America Rally' on January 6." The report also indicates that he "was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded." Like Perry, Mastriano also spoke with Donoghue in reference to unfounded claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.
Trump campaign legal advisor Cleta Mitchell: Described as one of the earliest advocates for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, the Senate report also notes Mitchell was a "participant in the January 2, 2021 call where Trump 5 pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes.'"

5. "Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin ('BJay') Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S. Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead, appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would 'do something' about his election fraud claims."

When former U.S. Attorney General Pak's investigative results did not align with the outcome Trump was hoping for, the outraged former president publicly berated him and described him as "a "Never Trumper." The former president also bulldozed over protocol and the proper line of succession to appoint someone he believed would produce favorable results to help him overturn the presidential election.

6. "By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election."

On November 9, 2020 the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr released a memo that "directed prosecutors not to wait until after certification to investigate allegations of voting irregularities that 'could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.'"

In doing this, the report emphasizes Barr "weakened" the DOJ's policy to "avoid taking overt steps in election fraud investigations until after votes were certified, in order to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election." His actions before and after the election disregarded the DOJ's longstanding practice.

===

wapo

“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast.”

— Former president Donald Trump, in a statement, June 17

False and misleading claims that cast doubt on Georgia’s 2020 election results continue to pop up seven months after the vote, and Trump keeps promoting them.

We have a high bar for fact-checking the former president these days, but this claim about an election “scam” in the Atlanta area carries weight. The state launched an investigation based on the same reports Trump is referencing from a website called the Georgia Star News.

But there is no evidence of a scam unraveling in Georgia, only shoddy record-keeping by local election officials.

The Facts

Joe Biden unexpectedly won Georgia by 11,779 votes of about 5 million cast, according to a hand recount of the votes that was done as part of a risk-limiting audit and that was later confirmed by a second recount.

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Because of the coronavirus pandemic, election officials authorized the use of ballot drop boxes by emergency rule. County officials had to fill out forms noting the date, time, location and number of ballots collected from each drop box.

The Georgia Star News, a pro-Trump publication,says it filed public-records requests with every county in the state, seeking the chain-of-custody forms that track the movements of all ballots deposited in drop boxes for the November election.

When Fulton County, the state’s most populous, responded to the request months later, the documents were incomplete. After several follow-up requests, Fulton County officials supplied 1,180 of 1,565 ballot transfer forms.

The missing forms accounted for 18,901 ballots, the Georgia Star News said. In a story June 14, the publication noted that 18,901 was “greater than the less than 12,000 vote margin of Biden’s certified victory in the state.” The same story quoted a Fulton County election official acknowledging that the request for records was not completed.

“We noticed that a few forms are missing, it seems when 25 plus core personnel were quarantined due to positive COVID-19 outbreak at the EPC [Elections Preparation Center], some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced,” Fulton County official Mariska Bodison told the Georgia Star News in an email on June 9.

The Georgia Star News said, “This is the first time that any election official at either the state or county level from a key battleground state has made an admission of significant error in election procedures for the November 3, 2020 election.”

Was it an admission of significant error? The county official said only that “a few forms” were missing.On June 16, two days after this story appeared online, the news organization Georgia Public Broadcasting said it had gotten ahold of almost all the missing records.[minus 8?]

“After GPB News asked the county Monday about the forms not included in the Georgia Star’s records request, elections staff locatedall but eight of the more than 1,500 forms, sent them to state investigators [raff? ] and provided them to GPB News on a flash drive,” the broadcaster reported, adding that “GPB News has obtained records for all 123 counties that used drop boxes, countering claims among some pro-Trump media outlets that there are more than 300,000 ballots’ worth of forms ‘missing’ statewide.”

By the time that fact check appeared, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) had announced his office would investigate the “revelations” from Fulton County.

“New revelations that Fulton County is unable to produce all ballot drop box transfer documents will be investigated thoroughly, as we have with other counties that failed to follow Georgia rules and regulations regarding drop boxes,” Raffensperger tweeted June 14 in response to the Georgia Star News story. “This cannot continue.”

When we asked whether Fulton County records were indeed missing, a spokesman for Raffensperger, Ari Schaffer, said: “The investigation is still ongoing. The investigation is of Fulton’s statement that they were missing forms, not any other claims made by the Georgia Star.”

After the state conducted a hand recount of its election results in November, Biden’s lead dropped from 12,670 to 11,779, apparently from a revision in Fulton County. The recount showed 880 fewer votes there.

Gabriel Sterling, a state elections official in Georgia, called the Fulton County discrepancy “a little worrisome” but said it was a big county with a history of managerial issues. He also noted the difference in vote totals was not enough to change the outcome in Georgia, according to the Associated Press.

Raffensperger has been critical of Fulton County’s election management and has suggested several changes, although he also has defended the integrity of the county’s vote results in 2020.

The county, covering much of metro Atlanta, was in short supply of trained poll workers last year and had long lines because of a shortage of voting machines, among other issues. An audit of Fulton County by a nonpartisan monitor appointed by the state elections board found “persistent chain of custody issues throughout the entire absentee ballot processing system” and blamed bad management.

The auditor said “the fact that ballots were being delivered to State Farm Arena in unsecured mail carts is very concerning. Protocol for securing ballots exists not only to protect the ballots themselves but also to ensure that no ballot box stuffing occurred.”

The auditor also reported: “From October to January, I spent nearly 270 hours at various locations observing every aspect of Fulton County’s election processes. At no time did I ever observe any conduct by Fulton County election officials that involved dishonesty, fraud, or intentional malfeasance. During my weeks of monitoring, I witnessed neither ‘ballot stuffing’ nor ‘double-counting’ nor any other fraudulent conduct that would undermine the validity, fairness, and accuracy of the results published and certified by Fulton County.”

Fulton County officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger has ruled out Trump’s claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump called the Republican secretary of state a “complete disaster” and falsely claimed his brother “works for China.” This year, Raffensperger is running for reelection and facing a primary challenge from Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), a Trump ally.

The Georgia Star News has been publishing regular updates of how many counties have supplied chain-of-custody documents for their drop boxes, keeping up the pressure on those that delay, as we found in this fact check.

The Georgia secretary of state’s office issued a news release in April debunking the implication that something mysterious was taking place besides tardy replies to a publication.

Of the 123 counties that used drop boxes, “120 have confirmed they filled out and retained ballot transfer forms in accordance with Georgia rules,” the statement said. The other three counties, Coffee, Grady and Taylor, were referred for investigation.

The Pinocchio Test

Despite Trump’s latest claim, there is no evidence of an election “scam” unraveling in Georgia.

In response to a request for public records made by a pro-Trump website, Fulton County officials failed to supply all the forms that track the movements of ballots submitted by drop box.

A Fulton County official acknowledged that the chain-of-custody records it provided to the Georgia Star News were incomplete. Days later, Fulton County provided almost all the records to Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Sloppy? Yes. But shoddy record-keeping by itself does not constitute evidence of election fraud.

We will keep a close watch on developments in Raffensperger’s investigation, and it bears keeping in mind that Fulton County has a history of election management issues, including an audit that found problems with keeping chain-of-custody records for ballots in last year’s election at the same time that it affirmed election workers’ integrity.

For now, without evidence to justify accusations of an election “scam” in Fulton County, Trump earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/trump-election-claims/

Since the 2020 presidential election, conservative news outlets have been popping up in droves to continue circulating former President Donald Trump's big lie about the election.

So how are outlets continuing to do this? According to NPR, it is more of a trick of the eye. The publication https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011916687/how-pro-trump-local-news-sites-keep-pushing-2020-election-misinformation.

While the publication appears to be just a local news outlet, NPR reports that it is actually flagship of a news syndicate, known as The Star News Network, which consists of several pro-Trump sites. Like The Georgia Star News, the network has created similar sites for states like Arizona, Ohio, and Florida.

Per NPR:

"Its part of the Star News Network - an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida."

By focusing on states where Trump is still heavily favored among voters, the network can continue to circulate misinformation since the audience is still focused on what transpired during and after the election.

During a rally in Ohio Las weekend, Trump also added more fuel to the fire with more dangerous claims of voter fraud.

"The biggest tragedy of all is millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote," Trump said." We can't let that happen. And that's why I say you have to know what took place in 2020 before you can vote in 2022 or 2024."

To name mafter worse, conservative publisher John Fredericksdefended defended sites and the information they share.

"We work very hard to fund our operation through legitimate advertising of all kinds, people that want to reach our expanding audience," he said. "And if somebody needs to reach informed, motivated readers that want the truth, advertising is a great opportunity for them, is a great [return on investment] potential."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

georgia GOP official who previously pushed back against Trump appears to have had a change of tune

Meaghan Ellis

May 27, 2021

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) may have voted for former President Donald Trump but he was one of the few Republican officials willing to push back against wrongdoings in the name of democracy. Now it appears Raffensperger, up for re-election, is appearing to fold.

According to The Daily Beast, the Georgia official, who previously opposed Trump's relentless efforts to overturn the election results in his state, released a tweeted statement this week shortly after a judge advanced a motion that would allow absentee ballots to be examined for fraud.

At the time, he tweeted, From day one, I have encouraged Georgians with concerns about the election in their counties to pursue those claims through legal avenues."

Then, he later conceded that "the county in question has a long-standing history of election mismanagement" (not that his audits found it) "that has understandably weakened voters' faith in its system" (the one he pronounced solid). The audit thus "provides another layer of transparency and citizen engagement."

The judge's granted motion sets Georgia on a path similar to Arizona's as Republicans in the Grand Canyon State fight to prove massive voter fraud was the reason for Trump's loss. Raffensperger's stance has shifted sharply in contrast to his previous take on Trump's efforts to overturn the election. It also signals a dramatic shift in Republicans' lack of concern about the state of America's democracy as they trudge dangerously closer toward the point of no return.

Based on the occurrences in Arizona and Georgia, it appears the election recounts could be ongoing with no end in sight. Per the Daily Beast,"Every day it's clearer that recounts are never going to end and a commission to investigate what happened on Jan. 6 is never going to begin,"

The publication also warns: "Looking ahead, Republicans want to make sure they never have a squish like Raffensperger foiling their plans again. They're busy packing races for election officials with partisans more susceptible to pressure, choosing candidates who publicly supported Trump's specious claims. This raises the real possibility that politicians still trying to undermine the vote in 2020 will do more than try the next time around."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

raffensperger battles Fox News host on Trump tape: 'I don’t understand how truth would jeopardize the country'

David Edwards Raw Story

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger tangled with Fox News host Sandra Smith after she accused him of putting the country in "jeopardy" by releasing a contentious telephone call with President Donald Trump, who pressured him to overturn the election.

During the interview on Fox News, Smith repeatedly badger...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-georgia-2649520984/

lin wood? jail kemp and raff

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hour audio trump pressure reffensberger and atty germany nice name

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/georgia-secretary-of-state-2649728639

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/failed-coup-trump/

salon

Trump is still trying to steal the election from Joe Biden, and while he is still going to fail, the terrifying reality is that a few cracks in the wall protecting democracy have started to appear.

While many pundits continue to minimize this entire situation, sneering at people who use phrases like "attempted coup," the grim reality of our current moment is that Trump got far closer to succeeding than many people would like to admit. He's only stopped now by the fact that too many people voted against him in so many different parts of America. Every indication suggests that if it were up to Republicans, who still hold a disproportionate amount of power, Trump might very well have been illegally installed for a second term in office.

The Washington Post reported that Trump reached out to Bryan Cutler, speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, on Monday in an effort to get Cutler to invalidate the state's presidential election results, citing "all these issues in Philadelphia." This is the third Republican state leader Trump has reached out to with this request — he's also contacted Georgia's Gov. Brian Kemp and brought Michigan legislators to the White House — and the third strikeout.

In fact, it's arguably the fourth. Trump also called Arizona's Gov. Doug Ducey. Ducey claimed the president wasn't trying to pressure him — but c'mon, Trump's "information gathering" is just more Trumpian code for his pressure campaign.

So why isn't Trump getting what he asked for? Much of the coverage of the recalcitrant Republican leaders portrays these officials as brave defenders of democracy, or at least people who have had enough of Trump's corruption and are drawing a line.

That's nonsense.

It's evident that what's holding Republicans back is not honor or decency, but a lack of options. There simply aren't legal processes to pull off what Trump wants, no matter what Newsmax or OANN might say, and state leaders know it. They are saying no to Trump not because they want to, but because, legally, they have to. Witness, for instance, what the Pennsylvania House speaker's spokesperson told the New York Times about the discussion with Trump: "Cutler made it very clear what power the legislature has and does not have."

Missing, of course, is any mention of the importance of democracy or a robust defense of the right of Pennsylvanians to vote. Cutler sympathizes with Trump's desire to overturn a free and fair election, which is why he signed a letter to the state's congressional delegation asking them to object to the state's electoral votes. He just doesn't have the power to vacate the election results.

Georgia's Kemp issued a similar response, noting how much effort he's put into "auditing" the vote, but underlining that he's hamstrung from doing any more. Again, this is not a high-minded defense of the right of Georgians to have their votes counted. On the contrary, Kemp has a long history of being an eager vote suppressor, and that's likely why he's governor today. He's just hit the limit of his powers to deprive voters of their right to be heard. The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has received widespread praise for his "courage" in standing up to Trump's coup effort. This is further nonsense. While Raffensperger has been more outspoken in defense of the election results than other Trump-toadying politicians, he too is acting more out of legal necessity than a desire to defend democracy.

Raffensperger has a long history of supporting voter suppression.Indeed, he's exploiting the current situation by conflating Trump's attacks on the election with the fight by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to *ensure*free and fair elections, on the grounds that both are losers who are critical of Georgia's election process. Of course, the two couldn't be more different, starting with the fact that Abrams is telling the truth about voter suppression and Trump is lying about voter fraud. But the larger point here is that Raffensperger's instinct is to use Trump's coup as leverage to strip away more voting rights.

Raffensperger is no hero. He's just legally constricted from being a villain in the particular case of Trump's coup.

Indeed, there was surprising enthusiasm for Trump's efforts in the days after the election from state-level Republicans, which is why 10 Republican state attorneys general filed an amicus briefon Nov. 10 demanding that the Supreme Court gut a Pennsylvania law giving mail-in ballots mailed by Election Day up to three days to arrive. What's happened since then, however, is mounting evidence that Democratic voters, egged on by the party's calls to vote early, outwitted Republican efforts to steal the election through such legal maneuvers. For instance, only 10,000 votes arrived in that three-day post-election window in Pennsylvania, so even if Trump's lawsuit had been successful, it wouldn't have changed the results of the election in that state.

Even in the face of all this, some state-level Republicans are still looking for any angle they can find to overturn the election. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Tuesday demanding that the Supreme Court prevent state delegations from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from voting in the Electoral College. Notably, all four states have been subject to accusations from Trump that the votes from large, racially diverse cities are specifically illegitimate.

On the federal level, the same dynamic is in play.

The Washington Post surveyed 249 Republicans in Congress about Trump's attempts to steal the election, and the numbers are disheartening, to say the least. Only 27 GOP congressional members openly opposed the coup by acknowledging that Biden had won the presidential election. Two members said publicly they believed Trump had won, and the rest — 220 duly elected Republican members of Congress — wouldn't answer the question either way.

Saying nothing is tacit support. These members would be perfectly willing to go along with Trump stealing the election if he could pull it off. They just aren't getting on board publicly because they know it won't work. Even if some congressional Republicans object to the state electors — and every sign shows that a handful will — Democrats control the House, so nothing will likely come of it. But this silence speaks volumes about who would happily collaborate with Trump's coup if they had any confidence it would work.

Of course, not all of them are silent. A group of House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mo Brooks of Alabama, are publicly calling on Trump to continue fighting even after the Electoral College legally certifies the election for Biden next week. There has been no rebuke from the Republican leadership to these extremists, not even from leaders who hail from the states where Trump is trying to have legal votes thrown out. The Republican stance, on both the state and federal level, is clear: They wish they could help Trump overturn the election, but they just don't see a path forward. They were prepared to abuse their power as far as they could to help him, and have hit the wall

Unfortunately for Trump, time has run out. Tuesday is the deadline for states to certify their results, and next Monday the Electoral College will finally make Biden's win official. The results are clear, not because Republican leaders have any integrity, but because voters showed up in large enough numbers to render all these shenanigans effectively moot. Trump will leave office on Jan. 20, and the only people who deserve credit for that are Democratic voters and organizers, who made sure Biden's win was big enough that it couldn't be stolen away.

vote suppr runoff early voting

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/georgia-runoff/

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1020 an

nononwhite Georgia voters have to wait in line for hours. Here are 2 critical reasons why

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1020 truthout

2020 ELECTION

Georgia Does Not Have Enough Backup Paper Ballots Ready if Voting Machines Fail

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/cover-up-house-democrats-subpoena-documents-nlrb-refused-to-share-in-ethics-investigation-propublica/

Starting in early spring, as the coronavirus took hold, a conservative lawyer at the forefront of raising alarms about voting by mail held multiple private briefings exclusively for Republican state election officials, according to previously unreported public records.

The lawyer, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.

Among the participants in these meetings has been an official from the office of Georgia’s secretary of state; the secretary, Brad Raffensperger,recently elevated concerns about voter fraud by contending that 1,000 Georgians had voted twice in elections this year.

gOP congressional staffers and a Trump administration appointee have also joined in these meetings, which were open to officials from states across the country, including Missouri and Nevada, the records show. No Democratic state election officials appear to have been invited.

The “goal” of the meetings, held remotely, is to “gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states,” an invitation to an early August event reads.

Most of the states declined to comment on the meetings, and it’s not clear what specifically was discussed. Von Spakovsky is highly influential in conservative circles. He has sent invitees copies of his published essays pushing for in-person voting and culling voter rolls as absentee balloting expands amid the pandemic, a situation that von Spakovsky argued will “make fraud far easier.”

The meetings come as voting access has become one of the central flashpoints of the upcoming presidential election. More Americans are expected to vote by mail this year than ever before because of the health risks posed by COVID-19. President Donald Trump has repeatedly and baselessly asserted that mail-in voting is rife with problems.Echoing von Spakovsky, he asserted on Twitter in July that the upcoming presidential vote will be the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”

Experts have said voting by mail carries little risk of fraud. Since it is widely believed that more Democractic voters will vote by mail than Republicans, von Spakovsky’s proposals, if adopted, could suppress Democratic turnout in one of the most consequential presidential elections in a generation.

Secretaries of state, who oversee statewide voting and work with county election officials, have broad leeway to act in ways that can limit or expand the franchise. While most are partisan elected officials, they are expected to carry out policies that benefit everyone.

The Heritage Foundation did not make von Spakovsky available for an interviewand didn’t address detailed questions about the meetings. In a statement, the nonprofit’s media director, Greg Scott, said election security was “crucial to our country’s future.”

“The Heritage Foundation is committed to making sure elections are free and fair,” he said. “Every eligible voter’s vote should be counted and not canceled out by fraudulent acts.”

The remote gatherings are an outgrowth of private, in-person meetings von Spakovsky has held with Republican election authorities each year since Trump took office, the records show. Participants have hailed from at least a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Ohio and Georgia. They typically dovetail with the national conference of secretaries of state in Washington, D.C., and take place at Heritage’s headquarters. Those pre-pandemic meetings did not primarily address voting by mail.

Jonathan Diaz, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan voting rights group, said it’s one thing for von Spakovsky to make dubious claims of voter fraud in public but “another thing entirely for him to be circumventing official channels and making these presentations in private, where they’re not subject to public scrutiny.”

Diaz added that election authorities need to be “transparent about the information they’re relying on to make decisions about the ballot.”

Von Spakovsky has hosted at least two of these remote meetings in recent months. In April, there was an hourlong “Election Administration Forum Conference Call” that covered, in part, the expansion of mail-in voting and “ways to message these concerns to your constituents,” according to the invitation. The event included the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees elections and five staffers, one of whom went on to work for the Trump campaign two months later. An August meeting, conducted through a secure, virtual video conferencing platform, was scheduled to last for two hours, according to an invitation.

A staffer from the Georgia secretary of state’s office participated in the April call. Before that, the secretary himself, Raffensperger, met with von Spakovsky in the summer of 2019 at Raffensperger’s request. At the Georgian Club in Atlanta, the two discussed a new law that involved replacing the state’s voting machines, according to Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs. That statute contributed to problems during what was widely viewed as a troubled June primary.

This month, around the time Raffensperger went public about double voting concerns in his state, he also appealed a federal judge’s ruling that the state must count absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day, the kind of policy change von Spakovsky has argued Democrats are using to “game the system” ahead of November.

“Hans, to our office, is the ultimate voter integrity activist,” Fuchs told ProPublica. While von Spakovsky “hasn’t driven any policy decisions” that have taken place under the secretary, Fuchs said that she briefed von Spakovsky on her office’s actions regarding double voting and absentee ballots.

There are indications that von Spakovsky has been influential within the Trump administration as well. During the August virtual briefing, state election administrators were told that Cameron Quinn, a Department of Homeland Security official, would now be their “liaison to the election community,” according to emails that a participant from Washington state sent to his colleagues.

Quinn has worked as an elections official in Virginia with von Spakovsky and has co-taught a law school course with him. During the meeting, she provided her cellphone number to the attendees.

The announcement of her role apparently came as a surprise to Washington officials, including the state’s director of elections, the emails show. The director, a member of a five-person committee that regularly interacts with DHS over election security matters, told her colleagues that there is a point of contact within the agency — and it’s not Quinn.

It turned out Quinn participated in the meeting without notifying her new boss beforehand, according to people familiar with the matter. Her appointment to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division within DHS that monitors election systems for foreign hacking attempts and communicates with state officials about them, had only been announced within the agency a day earlier, they said.

It’s not clear whether Quinn is still in contact with state elections officials. A division spokeswoman confirmed Quinn was not yet an employee in the division at the time she participated in the meeting but declined to answer additional questions.

Beyond Quinn, it’s not clear whether any executive branch officials have participated in von Spakovsky’s remote briefings. But in 2019, during his annual in-person gathering, the then-head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, John Gore, and its chief of staff and counsel, Omeed Assefi, attended in their official capacities, according to an attendee list.

The division is responsible for protecting the rights of voters. An agenda from the event shows that Gore and von Spakovsky led an hourlong discussion on “election reforms in the states and messaging and update on civil rights division, U.S. Department of Justice.”

“This is highly inappropriate,” Vanita Gupta, who ran the division under President Barack Obama, told ProPublica. “That kind of closed-door session, where a head of the Civil Rights Division is secretly speaking about enforcement with partisan state officials, is unprecedented. The DOJ isn’t accountable to just one party.”

Gore declined to commenton what took place at the event or if he’d attended other von Spakovsky meetings in the past as head of the Civil Rights Division. The Justice Department didn’t respond to questions about the Civil Rights Division’s involvement in the meeting or Gore’s presentation at the 2019 event.

At the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky maintains a database of voter fraud cases and, emails show, regularly urges secretaries of state to contribute to it. At the moment, the database encompasses some 1,300 cases, stretching over a period that begins in 1982. As Reuters recently noted, billions of ballots were cast during that time.

Von Spakovksy’s writings on voter fraud carry the veneer of academic research. But when he was questioned about his work in a trial two years ago, he testified that none of it has undergone the stringent vetting process of peer review. The judge in that case dismissed his testimony, saying it was “premised on several misleading and unsupported examples” and included “false assertions.”

Before coming to the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky served on both the Federal Election Commission and in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he drew scrutiny after approving a voter ID law in Georgia that a federal judge likened to a Jim Crow-style poll tax. In May 2017, Trump appointed von Spakovsky to a voter fraud commission that disbanded less than a year later without producing any evidence of voter fraud.

Do you have access to information about efforts by outside groups seeking to influence how election officials will administer the vote on Nov. 3 that should be public? Email Mike Spies at mike.spies@propublica.org, Jake Pearson at jake.pearson@propublica.org or Jessica Huseman at jessica.huseman@propublica.org. Here’s how to send tips and documents to ProPublica securely.