Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result

Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.

The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.

Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

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The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.

Among the oldest emails released are those regarding a 30 January article published by the United Tea Party of Georgia. Headlined “Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Georgia Election Officials”, the article was posted by an unnamed “admin” of the website, and came in response to letters sent to county election officials throughout Georgia who had recently refused to certify election results.

“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate elections officials,” the article began, “the Georgia Democratic party sent a letter to individual county board of elections members threatening legal action unless they vote to certify upcoming elections – even if the board member has legitimate concerns about the results.”

The letter had been sent by a lawyer representing the Democratic party of Georgia to county election board members in Spalding, Cobb and DeKalb counties. Election board members in each of those counties had refused to certify the results of local elections the previous November. In their letter, Democrats sought to warn those officials that their duty to certify results was not discretionary in an attempt to prevent further certification refusals, including in the coming presidential election. In response, the United Tea Party of Georgia took issue with the letter, calling it “troubling” and saying that it was “Orwellian to demand that election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote”.

While the author of the article was not named on the United Tea Party of Georgia’s website, the emails obtained by Crew show that it was Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections, who has become a leading voice in the push for more power to refuse to certify results.

“All right – I finished the article and posted it,” Hancock wrote in an email the same day he published the article.

Receiving the email were a handful of county election officials who have expressed belief in Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020, and have continued to implement policies and push for rules based on the belief that widespread election fraud threatens to result in a Trump loss in Georgia in November. They include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton county board of elections who refused to certify results this year; his colleague Julie Adams, who has twice refused to certify results this year and works for the prominent national election denier groups Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network; and Debbie Fisher of Cobb county, Nancy Jester of DeKalb county and Roy McClain of Spalding county – all of whom refused to certify results last November and who received the letter Hancock took issue with.

By 4 February, Hancock apparently hadn’t received much feedback from his article, and again shared it with the group.

“[N]o comments at all on the Democratic party of Georgia article. I guess it just wasn’t picked up by anyone important,” he wrote in an email to the group at 10.53pm that Sunday night, following up five minutes later with a link to the article. “I think the message needs to get out, so share as you feel led.”

Democrats and election experts have cited Georgia court cases dating back to 1899 dictating certification as a “ministerial”, not discretionary, duty of county election officials. At a Monday gathering of state-level election officials from several swing states, Gabe Sterling, a deputy to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, warned county election officials that they could be taken to court for refusing to certify results in November.

The communications also show members of the group coordinating on messaging regarding their false claims of widespread voter fraud. Ahead of a December meeting of the group, Adams, using her TeaPartyPatriots.org email address, sent an agenda that included an item about a “New York Times reporter traveling to several counties in Georgia”. Another agenda noted that the Federalist, a rightwing publication, was seeking “freelance writers (no experience needed)”.

The group has heard from speakers at their meetings that include the state election board member Dr Janice Johnston, an election denier who smiled and waved to the crowd at Trump’s 3 August rally in Atlanta in which he praised her and two other Republicans on the board as “pit bulls” “fighting for victory”. One agenda also noted that Frank Schneider, an election denial activist who has challenged the eligibility of more than 31,000 Georgia voters, would speak at a meeting. Other speakers at the group’s meetings include Garland Favorito, perhaps the state’s most prominent election denial activist who constantly pressures the state election board to launch investigations into supposed election fraud as well as to implement policies and rules he and others frequently submit. (In a separate release of emails obtained by the Guardian, Favorito is seen scheduling a July lunch with the state election board’s chair, John Fervier, a moderate Republican who has voted against recent denier-based rules passed by his Republican colleagues.)

Another meeting speaker was Salleigh Grubbs, the chair of the Cobb county Republican party, who successfully petitioned the state election board to adopt a rule that gives county election officials more power to refuse to certify election results. Amanda Prettyman, an election denier who spoke about election conspiracies at a 2022 Macon-Bibb county election board meeting, has also spoken at meetings of the group, as have Lisa Neisler, an election denier whose X profile contains a photo of Trump supporters at a rally on 6 January before the attack on the Capitol, and Victoria Cruz, a Republican who ran for a county commission seat in May but lost.

The emails back up previously released emails showing Hancock coordinating with Johnston on two rules passed by the state election board that give county election officials more power to refuse to certify results, as well as ongoing voter purges that Democrats have said are a violation of the National Voter Registration Act. Those emails also show Hancock’s initial response to the letter from Georgia Democrats warning county election officials like himself that they have a legal duty to certify results.

“When you have a moment, I would really appreciate your opinion on this incredible letter from an attorney for the Democratic party of Georgia regarding voting to certify an election,” Hancock wrote to Favorito on 4 January. “I guess they are trying to prepare for the 2024 elections? I don’t see how this stands – if the [board of elections] has no choice but to certify an election, then why require them to vote to certify the election?”