Donald Trump boasted about MAGA supporters taking over Georgia’s State Election Board, part of his team’s efforts to corrupt future elections.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way … They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job,” Trump said Saturday night at a rally in Atlanta.
The former president went on to name the three MAGA Republicans currently on the five-person board — Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King — calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
According to the State Election Board’s website, their charge is not fighting for “victory” for Trump. The board is “entrusted with a variety of responsibilities and authority to protect all Georgians’ right to cast a ballot.”
At the rally, Trump also pushed his big lie of election fraud, claiming, “I won this state twice, in my opinion.”
As Rolling Stone previously reported, Team Trump is behind efforts to undermine voter integrity in Georgia, and Trump privately pushed state lawmakers to remove a Republican from the State Election Board who was not MAGA enough. The official resigned and was replaced with King.
Trump’s allies have also worked in the state to purge voter rolls and put into place policies that make it easier to challenge election results. A source close to Trump told Rolling Stone that “Georgia is our laboratory.”
“If you can get this up and running in Georgia,” the source continued, “you get a road map for other states, maybe the country as a whole.”
Trump on Saturday applauded a rule requiring hand counting to validate the number of vote totals calculated by machines has not been finalized. It is currently up for public comment.
“[The State Election Board] just passed a rule for Georgia elections requiring that three people at each precinct independently count the total number of ballots before certification,” Trump said Saturday. “Who could be against that?”
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the only appointed Democrat on the State Election Board, opposed the rule. “The reason that this was not put into place is because when it was tested in 2019, it failed … Other counties tried and failed,” she said. “And I don’t want to be setting up our counties for failure.”
Trump also bashed Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, as “a bad guy, a disloyal guy, and a very average governor — Gov. Little Brian.” Kemp, along with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, refused Trump’s demand that they “find 11,780 votes” for him after he lost the state in 2020. In other words, they blocked Trump’s demands to illegally overturn the free and fair election — something the former president has clearly not forgiven them for.
“Your Gov. Kemp and Raffensperger are doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win,” Trump whined.
Trump also called Kemp “very bad for the Republican Party” because “he wouldn’t do anything” to establish a special legislative session to “go over” the 2020 election results. “We want to go over the election. We want to look because there’s too many things,” Trump said, blaming Kemp for refusing to sign Trump-backed legislation that would examine the 2020 votes.
“The governor wouldn’t sign it, and I knew he would because I got him elected,” Trump said. “I sent a young guy over to his office. … The kid came back. He said, ‘Sir, he won’t sign it.’ … Then I said, ‘Go back over. Tell him it’s for me.’ It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. They want to look into possible election fraud.”
Kemp did not sign the legislation, so Trump and his allies have plotted in the state to set up an end run around Kemp and Raffensperger for 2024.
Regardless of the electoral outcome in Georgia, Trump allies are prepping to claim voter fraud, Rolling Stone has reported. And Trump’s work in the state could provide him an advantage, especially if its election results are particularly close. The most recent Georgia polls show Trump and Harris even or just one to two points apart.
Trump isn’t only focusing his efforts on Georgia. Almost 70 pro-Trump election officials are in place in important battleground counties across the country, according to Rolling Stone and American Doom.
“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told Rolling Stone and American Doom. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”
