How a small-town Facebook comment led to a Georgia election investigation
A claim about long lines prompted the executive director of the State Election Board to send his PI to look into things.
We’re really cooking now. Here’s the latest bit of reporting from an ongoing series I’m conducting with Zeteo called Start the Steal, which will detail how Trump and Republicans are working to sow distrust and/or outright overturn the results of the November mid-terms. Today, how a Facebook post led to an official Georgia State Election Board investigation. Things are going to move fast heading toward November, so we’re going to need your help to keep us running at this high rate of speed. If you appreciate what you see here, spread the word, choose a paid subscription, or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund.
On May 19, a real estate agent and small-time political operative in Cherokee County, Georgia took to his Facebook page to warn his friends and followers of long lines at a polling location there during the primary.
“Problems in Cherokee,” Bryan Laurens wrote, saying that “combined precincts in a single location create almost 2 hour wait time.”
While there were long lines that day, it wasn’t because polling precincts had been “combined.” Instead, the lines were the result of the owners of a building declining to offer it as a polling location, causing election officials to have to use just one polling location in that district. Laurens did not report this nuance to his followers.
“TWO OF THE MOST REPUBLICAN PRECINCTS IN STATE OF GEORGIA. PEOPLE ARE LEAVING — NOT VOTING,” he wrote. “Reports now of similar happenings around the county in at least four different combined precincts.”
Not long after his post, Laurens was contacted by the executive director of the Georgia State Election Board, James Mills. Mills then filed an official complaint with his own board against Cherokee County based on Laurens’ Facebook post, and sent a newly-hired private investigator to question county election officials about long lines during the May 19 primary.
Then, in June the investigator, a Trump-supporting believer in election conspiracies named Larry Duckworth, sat down with Cherokee elections director Anne Dover, a 19-year veteran in the office, as well as the county’s attorney. Dover was aware of Laurens’ post, which was screenshotted and served as the genesis of Duckworth’s investigation.
Dover noted that “this was the first time we’ve had any kind of complaint about lines in the 19 years I’ve been here.”
“I want to know who made those screenshots and submitted the social media post,” Dover said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by American Doom.
Duckworth then told Dover that Mills had taken the screenshots as a result of his regular monitoring of election keywords on Facebook.
“The executive director has a flag for social media issues… what trigger words they have, I don’t know, but I received those from him,” Duckworth said. “As executive director, he’s got his eye out for issues.”
Prior to being appointed to the State Election Board by Republican legislators, Mills served on the state’s parole board and was a member of the state legislature. Before entering government, he was a Baptist minister and owned storage facilities. He has no experience in election administration.
Dover then asked if Mills looked at Facebook posts for complaints of long lines in any other counties. Clearly, he did not, although Duckworth wouldn’t admit this. The reason this question is important is because it shows that Mills — along with the other Trump-supporting election skeptics on the SEB — is prioritizing even the most minor complaints from Republican strongholds.
Long lines at polling locations are a regular occurrence throughout Georgia — and especially in cities like Atlanta, where voters skew Democratic.
But the SEB isn’t concerned with ballot access issues in places where voters elect Democrats; they’re only concerned with making sure that voters in places like Cherokee — which is overwhelmingly Republican — have as smooth an election experience as possible.
Duckworth’s haphazard “investigation” and his unserious questioning of Dover are evidence of this pattern. That his probe began because Mills saw a Facebook comment from a fellow, rural Georgia Republican is just the icing on the cake.
Mills and Duckworth even went to the trouble of blacking out Laurens’ name on the screenshots that formed the backbone of this strange and wasteful investigation. (Duckworth is paid by taxpayer dollars, as is the county attorney and Dover who had to take time out of their day to answer his questions.)
“Well, we decided to make those names redacted, etc., so there’d be no retaliation,” Duckworth said.
But Dover had already seen the posts. She knew Laurens, as well as others who had commented about the long lines that day. In fact, the posts are still up, and Laurens’ Facebook page is largely open to the public with few, if any, privacy settings.
For his part, Duckworth insisted that Cherokee was not “targeted” as a result of Laurens’ post, and that his investigation was above board. But Dover already knew that it was apparently the case that Laurens’ Facebook post had prompted the investigation.
Prior to meeting Duckworth, Dover asked a statewide group of election officials if any other counties had received official SEB complaints as a result of social media posts regarding long lines. Not a single one of Georgia’s other 158 counties responded that they had.
“I have asked other counties that have been targeted via social media for cases to be opened — there are zero,” Dover told Duckworth.
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