Ga. Capitol showdown flares over election powers in state

ATLANTA, Ga. - As Georgia’s elections chief finds himself in the political cross-hairs of some at the state Capitol, he’s calling on those lawmakers to help shore up election integrity.

Some lawmakers say Georgia’s appointed State Election Board has the legal power to investigate Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s handling of elections. But Raffensperger’s view is that isn’t legal.

“There is no precedent for an unelected board of political appointees to have oversight over of the executive branch,” wrote Charlene McGowan, Raffensperger’s general counsel. “Giving a board of unelected bureaucrats unchecked power over the state’s executive branch is a dangerous policy proposal.”

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But the Senate Ethics Committee disagreed, voting to advance Senate Bill 358.

The proposal would remove Raffensperger from his nonvoting post on the board, allow the board to hire election investigators instead of solely relying on those working for Raffensperger and clearly give the board power to investigate the secretary of state.

Raffensperger’s steadfast defense of Georgia’s 2020 election, which Democratic President Joe Biden narrowly won, and his rejection of a call by Donald Trump to “find” more Republican votes made him a national figure. But Raffensperger is also a pariah among many Republican activists, who continue pushing Trump’s claims he was the rightful winner.

Fighting foreign influence

Raffensperger, meanwhile, is calling on the General Assembly to ban foreign funding in campaigns and elections and to require lobbyists and political consultants to with the state regarding their work with foreign entities.

“Foreign actors shouldn’t be allowed to use dark money or American citizens as willing cut-outs to avoid disclosure of their goals and intentions in influencing the American political system,” said Raffensperger.

“Most people trust the mechanics of the voting and counting processes because we’ve been transparent about them and worked very hard to build public trust in those processes,” said Raffensperger. “We need to extend that same trust to the process of campaign finance and make sure that if there is any foreign interference in elections, voters are aware of it.”

Neither Raffensperger nor any of his staff appeared during the Tuesday Senate committee meeting, a contrast with testimony Raffensperger deputy Gabriel Sterling gave to a House Governmental Affairs subcommittee Tuesday on other bills.

Sterling said Raffensperger s a bill to stamp ballots with a watermark to ensure voters know they aren’t forged. He also voiced for a measure proposing more and stricter after-election audits to guarantee machines count ballots correctly. And Governmental Affairs Chairman John LaHood, a Valdosta Republican, agreed to amend a bill calling for high-resolution scans of ballots to be released for public inspection after Sterling said current scanners only produce lower-resolution images.

LaHood has also proposed a bill backed by Republican House Speaker Jon Burns that would mandate Georgia stop using QR codes to count ballots by July 1. Opponents say voters can’t be sure the computer codes match the choices printed on their ballots.

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“Every one of our committee said their citizens do not trust the QR code. So let’s go ahead and get rid of it,” Sen Brandon Beach, an Alpharetta Republican, said recently.

Raffensperger told lawmakers last week that he s a move to scan “human readable text,” the names printed on ballots, to count votes. But he said it was impossible to make such a change before the November presidential election.

Eliminating QR codes would cost $15 million to buy more than 32,000 ballot printers statewide, Raffensperger’s office has estimated.

The House subcommittee didn’t hear testimony Tuesday on the bill to ban QR codes. LaHood said afterward he was hopeful Raffensperger’s office might propose a new solution using optical character recognition software.