The results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia could once again come under scrutiny, after three conservative members of the state’s election board moved to investigate.
The Georgia State Election Board passed a last-minute resolution Wednesday by a vote of 3-2, which calls on state authorities to work with federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, to obtain voting records and other documents related to Fulton County’s 2020 election results.
President Donald Trump has long claimed the results were rigged when he narrowly lost to now former President Joe Biden. Ultimately, the results were never overturned, and the move marks yet another effort to root out any potential violations.
Under the resolution, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are called to work with appropriate authorities to locate any documents, according to Democracy Docket.
However, the resolution has been met with pushback. All Voting is Local’s Georgia state director, Kristin Nabers, said in a statement that the move is an abuse of power and based on disinformation and lies.
“There’s an obvious reason why conspiracy theorists in Georgia want to endlessly relitigate the 2020 General Election but never mention the 2024 election,” Nabers said. “They want to set a precedent where their candidates are the only ones that are allowed to win. That is not how elections work in Georgia or anywhere else in a democratic country.”
The resolution was introduced by Georgia Republican Party appointees Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King, who were praised as “pit bulls” by Trump during his 2024 campaign, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
John Fervier, the State Election Board Chair who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, opposed the resolution, as well as Democratic Party appointee Sarah Tindall Ghazal.
In 2020, Trump allies alleged around 3,000 ballots had been scanned twice during a recount. However, state investigators are yet to uncover any evidence that ballots were scanned more than once or that there was any intentional fraud involved with the election.
Johnston, Jeffares, and King issued a subpoena for information in November against Fulton County, which responded with a motion to disregard the subpoena, arguing the matter is still under investigation. In response, the board installed independent election monitors for the 2024 election.
During the board’s introduction of the new resolution, however, Johnston said the case was not closed and added the board had not yet received any requested documents. After filing a complaint alleging mass voter fraud, Carr reportedly said the board did not have the authority to force his office to investigate the allegations.
This is not the first time the board has raised eyebrows after it voted to approve the hand counting of ballots, which was then swiftly blocked by the courts.
King, one of the three Republican board members to support the hand counting measure, is the wife of Atlanta businessman Kelvin King, who has now entered Georgia’s race for Attorney General on the Republican ticket and is campaigning on election integrity.
