Several Georgia Democrats sued GOP Gov. Brian Kemp over his failure to hold a hearing on the three Trump-endorsed members of the Georgia Election Board after state Democrats filed formal ethics complaints against some of the members.
The lawsuit requests that the Fulton County Superior Court order Kemp to hold a hearing on whether the board members in question, who recently approved several concerning new rules that have the power to delay election certification in the state, are in violation of ethics laws.
Last month, the three board members, Janelle King, Janice Johnston and Rick Jaffares — who Trump recently referred to by name at an Atlanta campaign rally, calling them “pitbulls, fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” — voted in favor of a series of rules that experts agree are designed to sow seeds of distrust and chaos in the election system.
Per Georgia law, when formal complaints are filed with the governor’s office regarding the code of ethics for elected board members or commission members, “the Governor or his designated agent shall conduct a hearing for the purpose of receiving evidence relative to the merits of such charges.”
The plaintiffs, state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, former Chair of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections Cathy Woolard, and Democratic state Senate candidate Randal Mangham, argue in their lawsuit that the three board members “have voted and participated to change the rules and regulations of the State Election Board to favor one political party and its candidates over others.”
“We filed a petition with the courts to basically force the governor to do his job,” Islam Parkes, said in an interview with TPM. “We believe that a judge would certainly say that these three MAGA-aligned election board members who are the majority, that they’re passing these rules have broken the law and they should be removed.”
“The governor has abdicated his responsibility to fix this, and that’s why we ask the courts to get involved. So we just want the governor to do his job,” she added.
The board, in a 3-2 vote, passed a rule on August 6 giving the board the authority to not certify the results of the election until after a “reasonable inquiry” into any discrepancies in the voting process at the county level has been conducted by election officials there. The rule never defines what constitutes a “reasonable inquiry,” leaving just what is required of county and state level officials intentionally vague.
And on August 19, the board approved another rule giving board members the power to “examine all election-related documentation before certifying the results.” The rule also gives the board authority to examine discrepancies between the ballot count and the number of voters before certification.
Most recently, the same three board members approved yet another rule requiring elections workers to hand count the number of ballots cast in addition to a machine tabulation of the results in each precinct. The rule, like the previous two, has the power to upend the November election by causing delays in election certification.
In response to the 11th hour rule changes, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger emphasized recently on X that Georgia state law mandates that counties certify election results by November 12. Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Raffensperger’s office, said the same in an interview with TPM last week: the “safeguard is the law, which says that the boards of registration shall certify results no later than 5 p.m. on the Monday following the Tuesday election.”
Raffensperger also told the Christian Science Monitor in an interview that each of the board’s recently approved rules “oversteps what is already in state law.” He added: “Everything we’ve done is to shore up voters’ confidence – and everything that they’re doing is destroying voter confidence. It’s just a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.”
Woolard told TPM that the governor holding a hearing is really the only mechanism by which someone who is a board member or some other appointed authority position can be removed in Georgia. It’s the reason why holding a hearing is so crucial.
When Democrats first filed ethics complaints against the board members in August, Kemp consulted with his state’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr. Carr declined to issue an advisory opinion earlier this month on whether Kemp has the authority to address these formal ethic complaints, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“…the phrase ‘[u]pon formal charges being filed’ should not be interpreted to mean that a citizen can simply submit information to the Governor and trigger the hearing process contemplated by the Code Section,” Carr wrote in a September 6 opinion.
Now, Wooldard is expecting a judge to order Kemp to have the hearing, and, if the board members are found to have violated ethics rules, to remove them from their roles.
“The law is quite clear and can’t — it’s hard for me to contemplate that the General Assembly thinks that we would have appointed boards or other administrative bodies that can’t be removed if they’re engaging in misconduct,” Woolard said.
This lawsuit comes against the backdrop of another legal challenge mounted by the Democratic National Committee, the Georgia Democratic Party and Democratic members of several election boards against the board directly. The plaintiffs are asking the court to pause enforcement of the rules and to declare that, per Georgia law, election board members do not have the authority to delay certification or to simply not certify election results at all.
And more recently, on Monday, Democrats also mounted another legal challenge against the board over the hand-counting rule, asking the Fulton County Superior Court to block the implementation of the rule and arguing the rule is violation of Georgia law.
“…this Court should swiftly block the rule’s implementation before it can go into effect and wreak havoc on the general election,” the lawsuit reads.
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