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Brad Raffensperger

About

Brad Raffensperger (R) has served as Georgia’s secretary of state since January 2019 and won reelection in 2022. Based on his unwillingness to break the law in 2020 when Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to alter the actual outcome of the presidential election in Georgia, Raffensperger faced a primary challenge from a Trump-endorsed opponent. After winning in May, he worked to regain support from MAGA voters and ensure his victory in November.

Raffensperger is a licensed engineer and a business owner who served two terms in the state General Assembly from 2015–19.

The Big Lie

  • In running for reelection in 2022, Raffensperger played into right-wing claims of widespread voter fraud by urging local officials to investigate attempts by non-citizens to vote in 2020 and said that Democrats like gubernatorial candidate “Stacey Abrams and her allies are trying to get rid of Georgia’s citizenship check for voter registration.” He added that he would “fight her efforts to undermine the integrity of our elections all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,” if necessary.
  • Despite having critics on both the Left and the Right, Raffensperger profited from the stance he took in 2020 and his subsequent efforts to regain support from MAGA voters. He was the largest donor to secretary of state candidates in the 2022 election cycle, contributing $850,000 to his own campaign of the nearly $2.2 million it reported raising.

Election Audits

  • Under political pressure, Raffensperger ordered an audit with a hand recount of the 5 million votes cast in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election, something critics said he didn’t have the authority to do. 

Post-2020 Election Subversion

  • On Jan. 2, 2021, just days before Georgia’s U.S. Senate run-off race and congressional certification of Biden’s presidential victory, Raffensperger spent approximately an hour on a phone call with the lame duck president, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and attorney Cleta Mitchell, among others. During that call, Trump urged him to “find” 11,780 votes—enough for him to declare victory in Georgia and earn its Electoral College votes.  
  • In the days after the election, Sen. Lyndsey Graham (R-S.C.) was one of many Republicans who pressured Raffensperger to exclude certain votes and overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia. 
  • Shortly after Biden won the 2020 election, Georgia’s two U.S. Senators David Perdue (R) and Kelly Loeffler (R) accused Raffensperger of “failures” and called on him to resign (in spite of the fact that many other Republican election officials confirmed that voting in Georgia had been secure).