Experts Think Georgia Can Withstand Trump-Backed Conspiracies
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Hi, this is Liz. I'm currently at the Geographical Center of North America located in Rugby, North Dakota, while I'm on my cross-country road trip moving from Tacoma, Washington to Philadelphia, where I'll start my master's degree this fall at the University of Pennsylvania. This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. on Thursday, August 29th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will still be listening to lots of the NPR Politics pod to get me through this long drive. Enjoy the show!

That's what we like to hear. Head to a battleground state, too. Oh, yeah. That'll be exciting. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And we've got WABE Sam Greenglass here from Georgia with us. Hi, Sam.

Hey there. Today on the show, Georgia is on our mind, specifically Georgia's election and vote count. The state was at the center of then-President Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And across the country since then, a number of local county officials have voted not to certify local elections.

often citing conspiracy theories. So let's get into it. Sam, Georgia's election board has made news in this department recently that has some election watchdogs really worried. Can you explain what's happening? So Deepa, within the last month or so, Georgia's state election board approved two rules that Democrats and also local election officials have

Fear could cause disruption, delays, or at the very least confusion after election day. These rules are really vaguely worded. One seeks to redefine what certification is as a testing only after reasonable inquiry that results are true and accurate. That reasonable inquiry term is a little vague. Another says that if local board members find an error, the board, quote, shall determine a method to compute the votes justly. Again, a lot of question marks about what that means.

And now there's a lawsuit over these rules that's been filed by the Democratic Party with the support of the Harris campaign. And also three ethics complaints against the three Republican members of that state election board who backed these new rules. Miles, let's take even a bigger step back, maybe a little vocab check here. What exactly is certification? Honestly, this gets so confusing. So I actually think it is helpful to step back.

and actually just kind of look at the big picture. So certification is, before 2020, it was, and you could say it was administrative, you could say it was a formality, it was considered kind of a mundane part of the election process. After votes are tallied and election officials do all the kind of nitty gritty work to make sure that signatures, for instance, are validated on mail ballots and doing their sorts of audits,

There's kind of this step at the very end where a local election board, sometimes a canvassing board, sometimes it's the board of city commissioners kind of comes together and basically just signs off that the returns add up essentially. But these people, state law makes it very, very clear that this is not an investigative role.

This is a what's typically known as a ministerial role. And yet since 2020, what we've seen is that people who are being influenced by the sort of election denial that has kind of entered all aspects of our politics at this point have started using pushing these roles towards kind of what some people would call vigilante roles, where they are kind of trying to affect the election results, deciding, saying like.

sometimes in some cases they're saying, I disagree with the election laws that this election was conducted under, and therefore I'm not going to certify it. State law, though, is very clear that that is not the point of these sorts of jobs. And so that's kind of the crux of this issue is, will in 2024 more of these sorts of local boards, which there are thousands of across the country, how many of these sorts of pockets will there be where people decide to kind of insert chaos into this situation?

So we're definitely in uncharted territory here. This isn't really something we've been dealing with for years at a time now. But as we get closer to voting, I mean, I want to just point out here, Sam, this issue, this is something that Trump talks about specifically on the campaign trail.

A couple of weeks ago at a rally here in Atlanta, he called out the three Republican members of the state election board by name, calling them pit bulls for victory. That was really striking to hear these kind of bureaucratic, not household name officials reach the rally stage of a presidential candidate.

And we are hearing concerns from election officials across Georgia, the association that represents these election professionals, about 500 of them sent a letter saying they are gravely concerned about these rule changes, in part because they're happening so close to voting getting underway, both when it comes to certification and a whole host of other issues.

And there are concerns among these election officials, as well as Democrats and election experts, that, you know, there could be some growing attempts to meddle with these rules in a way that could help one candidate or at the very least, insert doubts about this process, you know,

There have been efforts already in primary elections this year at the local board level to vote against certification. At the end, none of these were successful. But election experts worry that just the very nature of calling into question the integrity of the election results could, you know, fuel additional distrust about elections during a really sensitive time in this process in a really key swing state.

Election officials, though, are not going to be caught flat footed in the way they were in 2020, specifically on this election certification issue. I talked about this with the secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Al Schmidt, who's a Republican. And in Pennsylvania, there were three counties in 2022 that declined to certify. And that put Schmidt in a position where their office had to sue and they're preparing to do the same thing again in 2024. We're not worried, but we will be prepared.

And in 2022, we had three counties in Pennsylvania refuse to certify. And that wasn't because the election was closed. That wasn't because there was any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud or an election irregularity. But they did not certify. So we went to court and promptly compelled them to certify. So if we see that happen again in 2024, we will be ready to go.

And that's what I've been hearing a lot from election experts is that they are very confident that the courts have a clear role here because state laws are so clear generally that these people are not supposed to be involving themselves in election disputes. There are in every state legitimate ways for voters, for candidates to challenge election results. Just to be clear, it's just not through this process. And so in all of these cases where these local boards decide that they want to get involved in this process,

at the state level, people are kind of already gearing up and ready to sue them and force them to certify. I'm curious, Miles. I mean, as you're talking about this, I mean, clearly people remember 2020, and that's very top of mind as they prepare for 2024. Is there a sense of, like, deep worry, though, or concern about this? I mean, preparation is one thing, but, I mean, this is –

deeply concerning when it comes to election integrity and counting people's votes. I think there's kind of two questions, right? There's one question, which is, will the votes be counted accurately and will the winner be certified? I think election experts generally are pretty confident that that will be the case. I think the second question, which Sam hinted at earlier, is,

All of this stuff kind of serves another purpose as well, which is just furthering this general doubt in people's minds that the elections are fraudulent. And when there is a large portion of the American public that feels that way, it does open yourself up for the January 6th potential scenario of people.

will act unlawfully if they feel like their voice is being silenced. And so I think this still feeds into that general fear. But I think in terms of will the election be stolen, generally election experts aren't worried about that. That's so interesting. And definitely so glad you mentioned January 6th in a way, because I think it's easy to forget that this election in 2024 will be the first presidential election since January 6th happened. And it feels so long ago, but it's definitely top of mind for a lot of voters out there as well. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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And we're back. And Democrats are also hoping in this election that they can run up the scoreboard enough in a state like Georgia so that there's not really a cause to investigate the votes, you know, being so close in the first place. You know, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are actually campaigning in Georgia right now. Sam, talk to me a little bit about their strategy there.

So yeah, this point that you make is something that I've heard from Quinton Fulks, the deputy campaign manager of the Harris campaign, who managed Senator Raphael Warnock's successful Democratic campaign here in Georgia in 2022. And he said that you can match all the momentum and enthusiasm that you want. But if people can't do that fundamental thing of expressing their right to vote, then it's all for naught. So they're really focused with voter protection on some of these potential challenges that could arise with the vote or in the weeks afterwards. And I think that's a really good point.

And you're right. The campaign is here in Georgia, in South Georgia, outside of Metro Atlanta, which is kind of unusual. Metro Atlanta is the stronghold of Democratic votes here in Georgia. But in a state that has been decided so narrowly in recent elections, you need every pocket of votes even outside of the Metro. So that's why we see Harrison Walls campaigning in and around Savannah on a bus tour, hoping to run up the margins, cut into some of that Republican territory there.

as you mentioned, in the hopes of not only winning the state, but having a margin that is a little bit harder to argue about when it comes to some of these election integrity claims. Yeah, I mean, I think Democrats really recognize that the race is going to be so, so tight in Georgia. The other side of the aisle, though, I mean, what have you seen from Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as they campaign in Georgia, too? Well, this week, as there's been a lot of hype about Harrison Walls hitting

of the state outside of Metro Atlanta. We've heard from the Trump campaign that this is something that they do all the time and that Democrats seem surprised that there are voters outside of Metro Atlanta. You know, these more rural areas are hotbeds of support for former President Trump and J.D. Vance.

And just last week, J.D. Vance visited a donut shop in Valdosta in South Georgia. It was panned online as being a little bit awkward, but we expect to see both of them back in the state with the race rated as basically a toss-up at this point. I also think it's really interesting when you think about these wide margins, it doesn't necessarily still kill the conspiracy theories. When I think about 2020 and where this whole, the beginning of the certification issue started in 2020 in Michigan, a state that Joe Biden won by more than $100,000.

votes. And so I think when I look at that, what that tells me is that it doesn't really necessarily kill all of this, even if there is a wide margin. Right. It doesn't necessarily mean like, okay, the tighter the race, the more dramatic the certification process might be. Right. Generally, there is less opportunity for whether it's a judicial order or whether it's an administrative issue. If there is a wide margin, it's less likely for something like that to actually impact the outcome. But I still think there's going to be conspiracy theories about no matter how wide the margins are.

Which is still pretty concerning. Obviously, yeah. And even if certification isn't the thing that these election scholars, Miles, that you have been speaking with and Sam as well, that might not be the thing that they are worried about. But, I mean, it's not like this is a we're all, you know, easy breezy up until November and through the vote count. I mean, there's still a lot of concerns here, especially because, like we mentioned before, voting starts in less than 10 days for a lot of voters in this country. Yeah.

And Deepa Miles, the Georgia State Election Board, has another meeting scheduled for the end of September where they are scheduled to consider more than a dozen additional rule changes that could take effect ahead of this election, which is really close. Absentee ballot applications are already out in Georgia. So the rules of the road are continuing to change, even as election officials prepare and train their poll workers for this upcoming election. I received an email from one election official in Washington

West Georgia, who told me how concerned he is and how they are struggling to keep up to date with all of these changes, basically having to adapt as they take off the plane.

Right. I mean, generally, election officials say you shouldn't make any changes to election processes in the year of a presidential election. And we're talking about days, you know. Labor Day was kind of the point where Democrats really thought voters would start tuning into the election full time. And here we are on the backside of things where people are still trying to, like you guys said, build the plane as it's sort of taking off here. Something I've heard and been thinking about is the fact that

In Georgia, it is still Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. These are people who in 2020 declined Trump's request to find votes, essentially. And I wonder how much does that play into how people feel about the fact that at least at the top of the leadership totem pole, there are still people who have said that they are dedicated to free and fair elections. But these...

Figures are still members of the Republican Party who want to run again in Republican primaries and elections. And so they have to kind of toe a very careful line here, both talking up the integrity of the election and confidence that the results will be fair and accurate, or

but also not wholesale discounting some fringes of their party who are still really tied into these false claims about 2020. Now, when it comes to certification specifically, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says he expects that these local boards will follow the law, which is certifying the election by the state deadline on November 12th at 5 p.m.,

And when it comes to this ethics complaint about the state election board members, we're waiting on Governor Kemp to make a decision still on what he can do about this. He's asked the attorney general's office for guidance. So you see them really having to walk this careful line as we get closer to the election. We're going to leave it there for today. Sam Greenglass of Georgia member station WABE. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Teepa Shibaram. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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