Georgia sees first major test for a Republican defending democracy

Hello, and Happy Thursday,

I’m writing from Atlanta, where I’m spending this week reporting on the Republican primary for secretary of state.

This race is perhaps the most important primary happening in America this year. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s incumbent secretary of state, is in a really tough re-election battle after memorably standing up to Donald Trump in 2020 and refusing his request to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election 2020 results. The former president is backing Jody Hice, a conservative congressman who has embraced the myth the election was stolen in a bid to oust Raffensperger.

It’s the first major test we’re seeing this year of whether a Republican who defends democracy can withstand the wrath of his own party. It’s also a major test for democracy both in Georgia and the US – one of several closely watched races this year in which candidates who have expressed willingness to overturn an election are seeking to be the chief election officials in their state.

I spent Monday morning in a conference room at the headquarters of Georgia Public Broadcasting, watching a live stream of Raffensperger, Hice and two other candidates – David Belle Isle and TJ Hudson – debate downstairs (reporters were not allowed in the room). Nearly the entire hour was about the 2020 election, with the other three candidates repeating baseless and debunked claims of fraud. The first question Hice was asked was why voters should trust his judgment if he continues to believe the election was stolen. He dodged.

“The big lie in all of this is that there were no problems in this last election. This last election was filled with problems,” Hice said. “Election security must be protected and Brad Raffensperger let that ball majorly fall.”

Afterwards, I asked Hice something I’ve been asking almost everyone I meet who believes the 2020 election was stolen: is there anything he could see that could convince him that it was accurate. The election results in Georgia have been confirmed through multiple audits and recounts.

“Not at this point, there’s nothing,” he said, going on to reference an allegation of illegal ballot harvesting from a conservative group that Raffensperger’s office is currently investigating. “This election was just overwhelmed with fraudulent activity. There’s nothing that can change my opinion of that.”

I also asked Hice if he thought Trump’s call to Raffensperger was appropriate. If he was elected, what would he do if a president from his own party called him up and asked him to find votes for him?

“Absolutely, there was nothing wrong with that request,” Hice said. “He was not saying go out and ‘find illegal ballots for me’. He was saying look at all the fraud that’s out here. Do your job. Make sure we have legal ballots that are cast, legal ballots that are counted, and had Brad done so, I believe the outcome would have been different.”

But the January 2021 call from Trump to Raffensperger was not just a generalized call to investigate suspicious activity. As Trump and his team listed what they saw as irregularities, Raffensperger and his staff said that they were either investigating them or had debunked them. Trump made it clear that he wanted the outcome to be a reversal of the election results. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” he said.

During the debate, Raffensperger pushed back on Hice by repeatedly describing him as a liar while also trying to burnish his own conservative credentials. He repeatedly touted his focus on preventing non-citizen voting – which is virtually non-existent. He said he would be in favor of getting rid of a federal prohibition on giant voter removals within 90 days of an election. And he said he supported getting rid of no-excuse mail-in voting in Georgia. In any other race, all of those would be controversial positions on their own. During the debate on Monday, they seemed moderate in comparison with those of Hice, who refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

At one point during the debate, Raffensperger, a former engineer who is soft-spoken and sometimes speaks awkwardly, seemed exasperated. He detailed how his office had played a kind of Whac-A-Mole after the 2020 election, debunking claims about felon voting, underage voting and dead people voting.

“The real problem that you have gets down to basic honesty,” he said. “It gets down to, it was actual, total, disinformation, misinformation, outright lying. And there’s not much I can do about that, because Jody Hice has been running from one rumor to another for the last 18 months. And how can you have confidence when people that should be holding a responsible position as a sitting congressman should be telling the truth.”

Also worth watching …

• Georgia’s department of driver services quietly eliminated automatic voter registration on its website, but has since restored it.

• A decision striking down New York’s congressional map is a major blow to Democratic efforts to keep control of the US House this year

• Mississippi’s governor vetoed a bill that would make it moderately easier for people with felony convictions to get their voting rights back.