About
Brad Raffensperger (R) has served as Georgia’s secretary of state since January 2019 . After refusing to give in to pressure from Trump to “find” enough votes to alter the actual outcome of the 2020 presidential election, he not only gained national notoriety but won reelection in 2022 despite a primary challenge from a Trump-endorsed opponent.
As part of the former president’s 2024 reelection effort, Trump continues to rehash false claims of election fraud and harass Raffensperger for not bending to his will. He disparages the secretary of state at his campaign rallies, and in an August 4, 2024, post on Truth Social, he wrote that Raffensperger should “do his job” and “make sure this election is not stolen.”
After writing a book about the 2020 pressure campaign from Trump—titled Integrity Counts—and four years of putting up with death threats from MAGA loyalists, among other shenanigans, Raffensperger isn’t backing down in 2024. He quickly rebutted Trump’s attacks in his own post on X saying that the state’s elections are “secure” and that “the winner here in November will reflect the will of the people.” Aiming directly at the GOP’s chosen candidate, he added: “History has taught us this type of message doesn’t sell well here in Georgia, sir.”
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).