Democrats in Georgia fear another years-long series of Republican allegations of election fraud

Georgia seems to be constantly tinkering with its election rules and laws. The problem is, they don't leave it as it is.

The five-member state election board recently approved some controversial rule changes for the certification process for the upcoming election, sparking a storm of indignation.

This is all about party politics because of the events of 2020, when Joe Biden flipped the state Democratic-Republican and won Georgia against former Republican President Donald Trump.

Republicans in the Peach State freaked out a little after that. They firmly believed that Democrats stole the 2020 election, so they took action to prevent it from happening again.

Despite a multitude of investigations and much noise and excitement over the results of the 2020 election, no solid evidence has ever been found that Trump's vote was stolen — not in Georgia or anywhere else. In fact, it is Trump who is charged with “unlawful conspiracy” to change the election results in Georgia.

The results of the 2020 Georgia election are still being challenged by some Republicans, but not by Governor Brian Kemp or Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both of whom opposed Trump's efforts to falsify the results. Raffensperger, as most will remember, was asked by Trump to “find 11,780 votes” to change the final outcome.

Six months after the 2020 election, I heard a speech in which Trump was still claiming the election was rigged. Then-Republican Senator Dean Burke, a doctor from Bainbridge, said there was no evidence that any votes had been stolen from Trump. I also heard a local county election official, also a Republican, say there were no irregularities.

The question now at stake is whether the state election board and its affiliated county election boards will have the authority to delay or refuse to certify this year's election results based on a “reasonable investigation” that could hamper the count.

The State Council voted 3 (Republicans) to 2 (Democrats) in August to give county councils discretionary power to review election results for irregularities, even if they were just rumors – despite the long-standing view that the certification process was routine work and not up to the councils' discretion. They even gave individual members of a council the right to review all ballots, potentially causing a huge delay in certification.

(In Mississippi, election boards are instructed to certify results in a “timely manner,” according to the Mississippi County Election Manual, issued by the Secretary of State’s office. Of course, the state — and every state — has had occasional allegations of voting irregularities and disputes over the final vote count, but there has never been anything like the Trump-led turmoil in Georgia after the 2020 election.)

All this comes at a time when many believe Trump is preparing another vote-counting blockade to overturn the Democrats' November 5 victory in Georgia, which polls show is imminent, and Trump continues to seek to have a 98-page indictment against him for actions after the 2020 election dismissed in state court.

After the state election board arbitrarily passed the new rules, Democrats in Georgia called on Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to fire the three Trump-aligned members of the state board — whom Trump publicly praised for doing a “good job.” They had allegedly held a secret meeting and passed the new rules, which allow county boards to delay certification of votes. Kemp, time is running out.

Democrats in Georgia fear that another years-long series of Republican allegations of voter fraud will sow discord in the economically strong southeastern state and spark an uproar that would make post-2020 protests seem like child's play. Let's just hope that the courts, against which both parties have filed lawsuits, or Governor Kemp, will intervene.

— Mac Gordon is a McComb native and retired newspaperman. He can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared in the Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Georgia Democrats brace for more Republican voter fraud allegations