Georgia Republican Burt Jones uses legislature to attack his opponent over 2020 election

By CHARLOTTE KRAMON
Associated Press/Report for America

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, is attacking his primary opponent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the 2020 election again, this time wielding his legislative powers.

In what appears to be an attempt to galvanize his right-wing supporters, Jones, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has demanded that Raffensperger appear at a state Senate Ethics Committee meeting Thursday so his supporters can grill Raffensperger on what they incorrectly claim were 315,000 wrongly certified Fulton County ballots from 2020.

Adding to the tension, a Republican state senator filed a resolution calling on Raffensperger to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice request for detailed voter data that includes names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Raffensperger has said that would violate state law and infringe on Georgians’ privacy. Georgia is among 23 states the Justice Department has sued to get that information.

Jones’ efforts indicate he hopes spotlighting the 2020 election and directing public ire toward Raffensperger will earn him the nomination, baffling some Republican strategists who say most Georgians have moved on.

Ricky Hess, chair of north Georgia’s Paulding County Republicans, said in a text that voters care about election transparency but are “ready to move on from relitigating 2020” and are more worried about affordability, education and public safety.

“Candidates who make 2020 the centerpiece risk sounding stuck,” Hess wrote. “Candidates who talk about practical steps that build confidence and then focus on today’s issues will connect with more people.”

Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In a January 2021 phone call, the president pressured Raffensperger to help “find” enough votes to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the state’s 2020 presidential election.

Jones already has Trump’s endorsement and the support of election skeptics, said Jason Shepherd, a Republican in Georgia who resigned from party office over disagreements with Trump supporters. It’s the rest of the voters he needs to win over, and Shepherd said most trust that Georgia’s elections are secure.

Fulton County back in the spotlight

Jones was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who declared themselves electors in 2020 even though Biden had won the state. He also backed a call for a special session to declare Trump the winner. Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr, Jones’ top rivals for the Republican nomination, spurned Trump’s efforts. Raffensperger and Carr will appeal to more moderate Republicans, but Raffensperger is expected to pull ahead of Carr.

Outcry over the false claim that the Fulton County ballots were wrongly certified went viral in right-wing media last year. In announcing the Ethics Committee meeting, Jones said Fulton County admitted that “315,000 ballots were not properly signed by poll workers.” Ballots in Georgia are never signed. It was the tabulator tapes from scanners used to count votes during early in-person voting for the 2020 general election that poll workers failed to sign, Ann Brumbaugh, an attorney for the county, acknowledged during a State Election Board meeting last month.

She added the county has new leadership overseeing elections and implemented new training and procedures for checking tabulator tapes.

Raffensperger called what happened a “clerical error.” The Brennan Center’s director of elections and security Gowri Ramachandran agreed with that assessment. Signing tabulation tapes is not how votes get counted, and the error doesn’t invalidate election results, she said.

“There is nothing in the election code overturning it for not following a procedural rule, especially invalidating every single early vote cast in Georgia’s largest county,” said a spokesperson for Raffensperger.

Jones said in the announcement that Raffensperger’s office needs oversight.

“I will not allow the Secretary and his allies in the press to let him escape accountability by downplaying this utter failure as a mere ‘clerical error,’” Jones said.

During his campaign, Raffensperger has said Georgia’s elections are nationally recognized as secure. In a letter to the Ethics Committee’s chairman, Raffensperger’s office said they provided the DOJ with Georgia’s voter list and complied to the extent that Georgia law allows. His office filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Wednesday.

“If you and your colleagues wish to weaken the legal protections for Georgia voters’ private information and make millions of Georgians vulnerable to identity theft, you can certainly change the law, but that is not something that the Secretary of State’s office would support,” the letter says.

Why run 2020 again?

Since Trump often laments the 2020 election with a focus on Fulton County, where he was indicted over attempts to overturn the results, it’s not surprising that Jones wants to keep it on voters’ radar, said Georgia State University political science professor Dr. Jennifer McCoy.

Jones will have to appeal to a broad swath of voters in the general election, but McCoy noted that Democrats previously crossed over to vote in the Republican primary for Raffensperger for secretary of state.

State GOP Chairman Josh McKoon said election security is a “key concern” among Republican primary voters and candidates will continue to talk about it.

Shepherd said he’s surprised that a “bureaucratic error” is galvanizing the party’s MAGA wing as much as it is. Garland Favorito, a conservative activist known for espousing conspiracy theories and challenging the state’s 2020 results, said Fulton County’s error is just one example of what he describes as Raffensperger’s lack of transparency.

Republicans like Jones “think that if they can win all the straw polls at the Republican Party barbecues, they’ll probably win the nomination, when typically speaking, it’s the opposite,” said Shepherd.

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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.