Three of the five members of the Georgia State Election Board, which works with the secretary of state to enforce election regulations and investigate complaints about the process, are election deniers, despite the fact that the board’s code of conduct calls for members to be “honest, fair, and avoid any appearance of conflict and/or impropriety.”
In August 2024, the State Election Board approved a measure that gives local officials newfound power to refuse or delay certification of a county’s election results, opening the potential for even more chaos following the 2024 election. Just days before they voted on the measure, Trump applauded the Republicans on the board, saying at a campaign rally that they are “on fire” and calling them “three pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”
The following election administrators in Georgia still parrot the ex-president’s claims of a “rigged” election and continue to spread disinformation about election integrity in 2024:
- Rick Jeffares | State Election Board
In January 2024, the Georgia Senate appointed former Republican state Senator Rick Jeffares (R) to the Election Board despite his “alleged history of promoting claims of fraud that were debunked by the [same] board,” as Democracy Docket reported. Shortly after the 2020 election, his Facebook posts claimed that “dead people had voted by mail, … the Democrats and China had colluded, and… that Democrats had cheated.” In opposing his nomination to the board, state Senator Jason Esteves (D) pointed out that, “It is nothing short of dangerous and irresponsible to empower conspiracy theorists on the State Election Board. This nomination will only serve to further those theories and undermine the people’s confidence in Georgia’s elections.” - Janice Johnston | State Election Board
Since the 2020 election, Janice Johnston has made complaints about election procedures at Fulton County Board Meetings (one of the most highly contested counties in that and subsequent elections), “calling for the firing of the county’s elections director, criticizing the job performance of temporary election workers and repeating unsubstantiated allegations of ‘falsified tally sheets’ during an audit,” according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. In December 2023, she voted in favor of a failed motion to investigate Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs denounced the move, saying, “The election wasn’t stolen and our office is surprised to see particular members of the State Election Board laying the foundation to discredit the next election.”
In early 2024, Johnston proposed calling on the General Assembly to prohibit no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia due to “the risk of fraud,” but the full Election Board voted against her proposal. In August 2024, when the board voted in favor of giving local officials the power to refuse to certify election results, she said, ““We’re not asking for a full election audit. We’re just asking for a reasonable inquiry.” - Janelle King | State Election Board
Shortly after being appointed to the board in June 2024 to replace a more moderate Republican, Janelle King said she didn’t know if the 2020 election had been fairly administered in Georgia. “I believe that there are some things that are questionable,” she told The Guardian. “And I believe that those things have caused a disruption in whether or not people believe in our process.” In July 2024, King spoke in favor of reopening the board’s investigation into the 2020 presidential election results in Fulton County, which includes the Atlanta metropolitan area. When Biden won the county in 2020, Republicans demanded multiple investigations, none of which uncovered any fraud. However, King argued, “All we want is a little bit more time to look at this. I’m supporting getting more information because the information that I was provided, it gave me questions.” - Debbie Fisher | Cobb County Board of Elections
As a member of the county Board of Elections, Debbie Fisher voted against certifying the results of the November 2023 statewide municipal elections. Minutes from that board meeting report that she saw “no reason to certify” and that the “issues of concern” included “inconsistencies in reporting with the [secretary of state].” Later, she told a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she “opposed certification because she didn’t understand why voter check-in data for some early voters appeared twice on reports generated by the secretary of state’s office.” However, state elections officials claimed that the programming issue was “quickly resolved.” - Nancy Jester | DeKalb County Board of Elections
Nancy Jester refused to certify the results of the November 2023 statewide municipal elections. In 2021, she replaced Baoky Vu, “a longtime Republican elections board member who was not reappointed for another term because he pushed back on false claims of widespread voter fraud in last fall’s election,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. - Anthony Lewis | Dekalb County Board of Elections
Anthony Lewis is among the county elections officials who refused to certify the results of the November 2023 statewide municipal elections in Georgia, according to Rolling Stone. - Sharlene Alexander | Fayette County Board of Elections
In July 2024, the Georgia Election Board voted to advance a proposed rule submitted by Sharlene Alexander that would require three people at each polling precinct to hand count the total number of ballots and compare them with the machine totals. In a statement criticizing her petition and similar proposed procedural changes, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) warned that “activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures outside of the legislative process undermine voter confidence and burden election workers.” The board will vote on Alexander’s proposed rule change at its September 20 meeting. - Gary Stamper | Floyd County Board of Elections
After Georgia’s General Assembly dissolved the nonpartisan Floyd County Board of Elections in the wake of the 2020 election, the county commission appointed Gary Stamper as one of three Republicans on the five-member board. He routinely peddled baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election, including allegations of problems with mail-in ballots and rigged voting machines, according to The Washington Post. - Julie Adams | Fulton County Board of Elections
After refusing to certify two primaries in 2024, recently appointed elections official Julie Adams filed a lawsuit against the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections for denying her request to first examine a long list of election records in search of signs of fraud or other irregularities. The board member is not only an avid Trump loyalist but also a regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network (EIN), a national group founded by extremist lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell that has been recruiting election deniers in battleground states to target local election offices. Adams helped found the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition after attending an EIN summit in 2022. She is also affiliated with Tea Party Patriots, another election denialist group. - Michael Heekin | Fulton County Board of Elections
Mike Heekin joined fellow Board of Registration and Elections member Julie Adams in voting against certifying the results of the March 2024 presidential primary, echoing the same procedural questions raised in her 2024 lawsuit, including lack of timely “access to essential election materials and processes.” - David Hancock | Gwinnett County Board of Elections
After the 2020 presidential election, David Hancock made unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud on his Facebook page. In December of that year, he posted, “Kudos to our GA State Republican Party! They are fighting HARD to get the SOS to investigate the mountain of fraud in this election.” Several days later, he posted a video purporting to show “ballots pulled from under a table and counted without observers” in Fulton County. Another Facebook post from December 2020 reads, “Those of us looking to expose what happened in the Nov election are not going to stop on January 20th. What happens if proof of massive fraud (with confessions and perhaps jail time) comes out in, say, February?”
More recently, Hancock has also posted about election fraud on his X/Twitter page, including a July 2024 repost of a tweet characterizing the 2020 election as “arguably the greatest fraud in world history,” as well as a retweet alleging that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s general counsel is “holding evidence hostage from the State Election Board,” which is trying to investigate “why there were over 20,000 unsubstantiated votes in both the original and machine recount in 2020.” - Alice O’Lenick | Gwinnett County Board of Elections
Shortly after the 2020 election, Alice O’Lenick, then chairwoman of the county elections board, didn’t hide “her anger with the democratic process that allowed voters in [suburban Atlanta] to help turn the state blue,” according to The Root. She also told a local news station, “I’ve never seen an election, presidential or local election, that had so many hang-ups to it. I would just like to say I’m very disappointed in the system […] My confidence in the Dominion system has waned.” In addition, she alleged without direct evidence that the county saw an increase in attempted voting by undocumented immigrants.
Speaking at a Gwinnett County Republican Party meeting in January 2021, O’Lenick advocated for changing Georgia’s election laws so that Republicans would “at least have a shot at winning.” She also said she was “like a dog with a bone” in her focus on changing some election laws, specifically those regulating mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes, which she calls “ballot harvesting boxes.” As chair, she voted against certifying the county’s 2020 election results and even though a coalition of county legislators and civic groups called on her to resign, she has held her ground and still serves on the board, though no longer as chair. - Jack Noa | Hall County Board of Elections
During a 2022 radio show interview, Jack Noa claimed that “Dominion machines” and “paper crossing the state line to vote” were behind his desire to apply for the position as chair of the County Board of Elections. Shortly after he was appointed, he again cast doubt on the reliability of voting machines and “the integrity of the general election system.” - Ben Johnson | Spalding County Board of Elections
A purveyor of election conspiracies, Ben Johnson has addressed social media posts to “fellow insurrectionists” and called Joe Biden “an illegitimate president.” He has called for banning electronic voting machines, early voting, and mail-in ballots, echoing unsubstantiated claims about “ballot trafficking.” More than a year after Georgia’s secretary of state confirmed the legitimacy of Biden’s win, Johnson posted about the “hours upon hours of video-taped ballot harvesting in Georgia, the phantoms all over, the dirty voter rolls, the withholding of subpoenaed materials.” He also falsely claimed at a public meeting that a judge had ruled Dominion voting machines were “illegal” in Georgia. Johnson voted against renewing the county’s maintenance contract with Dominion and was involved in the 2021 effort to hire the computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to preserve digital images of the county’s election machine data—an illegal breach of voter privacy. In July 2023, Johnson voted to require the county to hand count all ballots before certifying the results of an election. - Roy McClain | Spalding County Board of Elections
Since the 2020 election, Roy McClain has called for eliminating the use of voting machines in Georgia, so often that colleagues have called him “obsessed” with Dominion voting machines. In November 2023, he refused to certify the results of municipal elections in the county despite a recount showing the exact same results tabulated by voting machines. McClain was also involved in the 2021 effort to hire the computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to preserve digital images of the county’s election machine data—an illegal breach of voter privacy. In July 2023, he voted to require the county to hand count all ballots before certifying the results of an election. - James Newland | Spalding County Board of Elections
In July 2023, as a member of the county Board of Elections and Voter Registration, James Newland introduced and voted in favor of a motion to require hand counts of ballots and withhold certification of election results until all discrepancies are resolved. While introducing the measure, he reportedly cited false claims about widespread voter fraud in Georgia, including that people who do not exist or are ineligible to vote do so in significant numbers. That same day, Newland attended a hand count demonstration hosted by the state GOP’s Second Vice Chair David Cross, a prominent election denier, and the election denier group Georgians For Truth. - Kimberly Slaughter | Spalding County Elections Supervisor
As a county elections supervisor, Kim Slaughter was involved in the 2021 effort to hire the firm SullivanStrickler to obtain images of the county’s election system, which would have been an illegal breach of election data. In July 2023, she voted in favor of a motion to require hand counts of ballots and withhold certification of election results until all discrepancies are resolved. That same day, Slaughter attended a hand count demonstration hosted by the state GOP’s Second Vice Chair David Cross, a prominent election denier, and the election denier group Georgians For Truth. - Drew Chestnutt | Worth County Board of Elections
In a Facebook post several days after the 2020 election, Drew Chestnutt showed an official letter from Georgia state legislators to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding that he investigate Trump’s allegations of fraud in the state. Chestnutt urged his followers to take action, posting: “Please call!”