Pro-Trump election officials in Georgia coordinate to deny results, purge voters

New emails reveal the behind-the-scenes efforts to purge voters and refuse to certify results of elections.

As they prepared to certify results of the May 2024 Georgia primary elections, election officials in three counties discussed what they felt they needed in order to vote “yes” on certification of the results. The officials needed detailed records of ballot receipts from voting machines and other detailed election that they could use to hunt for evidence of fraud, miscounted votes and other routine election errors, they told a member of the Georgia State Election Board in emails I obtained Monday and detailed at Rolling Stone last night. 

We’re going to get in the weeds here but the bottom line is this: the emails I obtained show further evidence of deep and widespread coordination across the state of Georgia on behalf of Trump’s election lies. They involve a who’s who of election deniers who serve as local and state election officials, as well activists who have forced their beliefs on millions of Georgia voters by successfully getting the State Election Board to ram through rules based in election denialism. 

The emails show Dr. Janice Johnston of the SEB coordinating with David Hancock of the Gwinnett County election board on a number of fronts. Those fronts include pushing for more power for election denial officials like Hancock to deny certification of results he doesn’t like (as in, results that show Trump losing) as well as the possibly illegal voter purgers that election deniers and Republicans have been implementing across the state. (Those purges are now the subject of a lawsuit that Trump’s RNC has gotten involved in, essentially saying the purges should continue despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.) 

The emails date back to May and show Johnston and Hancock discussing materials that Hancock demanded in order to certify results of that month’s primary. Included in those conversations and others were the following Georgia election deniers who have all been involved in recent months in pushing for more rules that stand to benefit Trump’s efforts to call election results into question. These officials include:

• Alice O’Lenick, Hancock’s fellow Republican election board member in Gwinnett County who supports election lies and has voted against certification

• Julie Adams (using her Election Integrity Network email address, no less). You might remember Adams as the Fulton County election board member who has refused to certify election results twice so far this year and is suing with the help of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute for more power to refuse to certify.

• Michael Heekin, Adams colleague on the Fulton County election board and a Republican. At a recent SEB meeting, Heekin argued for the “reasonable inquiry” certification rule that gives broad power to him and others to refuse to certify results of elections they don’t like. 

• Bridget Thorne, a Fulton County commissioner who ran a secret election denier Telegram account that the Guardian exposed a few months back

• Lt. Gov Burt Jones, who is CC’d on an email from Johnston claiming there are 27,000 illegally registered voters in Georgia. Jones is an election denier who was considered for indictment for his role in the fake elector scheme in 2020 in which Georgia Republicans tried to illegally install Trump as president. 

• Debbie Fisher, a Republican member of the Cobb County election board who has refused to certify results

• Elizabeth Delmas, election denial activist who is tied to the Constitition Party of Georgia

• David Cross, unhinged election denier who is one of the leaders of the Georgia denier movement and who constantly harasses election officials to implement policies based on election lies

• Garland Favorito, perhaps the most prominent election denier in the state who is an equally powerful harasser of election officials and has successfully lobbied for some of the rules the State Election Board has passed recently

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Johnston is a pro-Trump member of the State Election Board who smiled and waved to the crowd at an Aug. 3 rally held by Donald Trump in Atlanta as he praised Johnston and three other MAGA members of the election board. Since then, Johnston has been instrumental in passing rules pushed by election denial activists that will benefit the Trump campaign, Democrats and voting rights advocates have said. 

She has been joined in those efforts by Rick Jeffares, a pro-Trump Republican who I exposed recently for attempting to solicit a job in a second Trump administration, and Janelle King, a conservative media personality who told me has no experience administering elections. When this MAGA trio at the SEB passed its first controversial certification rule a few weeks back — the one that allows county election officials like Hancock to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results — there were lots of questions about what, exactly, a “reasonable inquiry” entailed. Johnston and others deflected on these questions, leading Democrats and voting rights groups to say it was simply a vague, red herring for election deniers to use anything as justification to hold up certification. 

But the communications I obtained yesterday reveal what some of those materials are. In a May 11, 2024 email, Hancock provides Johnston with a lengthy list of documents he’d like to see before approving certification. Those materials include ballot recap sheets, chain of custody documents, poll open and close tapes, and proof of oaths of office for all poll workers. This is likely a similar, if not identical, list of materials that were demanded by Adams in Fulton County.

For 100 years, Georgia courts have determined certification to be a mandatory duty of county election officials. Only recently have those officials decided that certification is at their discretion — a dubious legal claim based on their beliefs in non-existent widespread voter fraud. Hancock and others operate under the false belief that having access to extremely complicated materials from voting machines and polling locations can help them prove voter fraud. Experts and Democratic election officials have told me this simply isn’t possible — primarily because widespread voter fraud does not exist. 

Democrats contend in a lawsuit filed Monday night that the two newly-passed certification rules could delay or even stop the certification process that helps decide the next president.

“A delay or failure to certify at the county level would run headlong into the Secretary of State’s own certification obligations, potentially interfering with binding federal deadlines, and could result in the Secretary certifying results without counting ballots from the affected county,” Democratic lawyers say in the lawsuit. “If a county board or other superintendent refused to certify (or delayed in certifying) to complete a ‘reasonable inquiry’ or conduct an undefined examination, the Secretary of State would still proceed with his reporting of results, meaning that that reporting could occur without counting ballots from the county—thereby denying the county’s voters their fundamental right to vote.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, a Republican, has come out against the certification rules passed by the SEB last week, rules they’re now being sued over. Over the weekend, the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials (GAVREO) asked the State Election Board to stop implementing rules that will affect millions of Georgia voters less than 90 days from the election. And now, Gov. Brian Kemp has asked Georgia’s attorney general whether the MAGA trio of Johnston, King and Jeffares can be removed.

“In a time when maintaining public confidence in elections is more important than ever, making changes so close to Election Day only serves to heighten concerns and fears among voters,” GAVREO said in a statement.

Some of the organization’s members — who serve as county election supervisors — spoke out against the latest certification rule at last week’s State Election Board hearing. Still, Johnston, King and Jeffares rammed the rule through anyway. 

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Thorne, Adams and Heekin were reported to be behind the push for more power to deny certification, rules that ProPublica reported had stemmed from election conspiracy groups like Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Adams, a regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network, is included on the emails with her email address for the organization. Now, we can confirm what I’ve suspected based on his Facebook posts about certification and other election denial matters: Hancock was involved too. 

The emails I obtained also show that Hancock, Johnston and O’Lenick coordinated on voter purges as recently as three weeks ago — even as the election was less than 90 days away. This could be a problem for officials like Hancock who have pushed voter purges based on specious claims that ineligible voters have committed fraud. In fact, it already is a problem: The New Georgia Project is suing Gwinnett and a handful of other counties over what the organization calls illegal voter purges that occurred less than 90 days before elections, a possible violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

CC’d on the emails I revealed last night was the private email address of Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who I found recently had personally asked Jeffares to serve on the State Election Board because Jeffares would “be strong.” The emails Jones is CC’d on deal with Hancock’s and Johnston’s voter purge efforts.

The Republican National Committee supports those purges, filing a motion to intervene in the New Georgia Project lawsuit, as I reported last week. 

Naturally, the emails also include a continued obsession with proving that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump thanks to “analysis” conducted by David Cross and Phillip Davis, a self-proclaimed “ballot integrity analyst” who posts on X under the handle, @mad_liberals. 

Most of the officials did not return my request for comment or answer my questions. Fisher criticized my questions but didn’t answer them.

“I have no comments related to your misguided and inaccurate assumptions,” she said. “If you want to print the truth, please feel free to rephrase your questions.”  

Hancock also responded, laying out the process he goes through to identify potentially ineligible voters and asking if I agreed that the examples of ineligible voters he provided “should not be on the Georgia voter rolls.” He went on to criticize “liberal publications” for implying that the new certifications rules “will allow delay of certification,” when the rules actually do :”the exact opposite for board members like me who want to inspect the process as required by Georgia State Law.”

Democrats contend in their lawsuit filed Monday night that there is no stipulation in Georgia law allowing for officials like Hancock to vote against certification on the grounds that they want to see election records.

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P.S. Many thanks to all of our new subscribers. I’m rolling into month three of what has felt like non-stop breaking news — the RNC, Sonya Massey, Georgia election madness, election deniers throughout the South, what else? I can’t remember. Oh, an exclusive on Arizona election madness, too. Just a reminder that I’m an independent journalist and the only person covering the issue of local election denial officials this comprehensively. In fact, I’ve compiled a list of almost 100 election deniers working as county election officials in 11 states. You can support my work by subscribing to American Doom for as little as $5 a month. You can also now give American Doom a one-time donation if you prefer. New subscribers in the U.S. can grab the American Doom sticker you see below. I had mine proudly on display when appearing on Brian Tyler Cohen’s show Monday night. You can catch me there in an episode Brian said he’ll publish later today as well.