Top Georgia election officials clash over Trump-fueled conspiracy theories

By Jason Morris, Gabe Cohen, Nicky Robertson, CNN

Whitfield County, Georgia (CNN) — On his nationwide campaign swing for Republicans, President Donald Trump traveled to Dalton, the self-proclaimed “Carpet Capital of the World,” last week and revived a familiar falsehood: that Georgia’s past elections were rigged.

In the rural manufacturing hub, democracy was humming. More than 900 people streamed through the Whitfield County courthouse — far and away the county’s busiest day in the first week of early voting. And in this deep-red part of northwest Georgia, the official overseeing those ballots had a sharply different message.

Whitfield County Election Director Shaynee Bryson told CNN that Georgia elections are secure, calling Trump’s claims “discouraging.”

“We do try to overlook it because we know the truth,” Bryson said. “And the majority of our voters know the truth.”

Election distrust has taken root here since 2020, as it has in many parts of red-leaning America. Bryson, who identifies with neither party, has spent election after election batting down false claims and conspiracy theories.

“I’ll say, ‘You know I agree with a lot of points that you agree on as well. Why would I ever rig it to be a different way for another candidate to win?’” she said.

Bryson fears election tensions are boiling up again. Her staff has started opening mail with gloves and masks after letters containing suspicious white substances arrived this month at election and political offices across the country, including in Georgia.

“I worry about Election Day workers at times,” Bryson said, “That’s what keeps me up at night. What if? What if?”

Few states carry more political scar tissue from 2020 than Georgia. Trump and his allies made it a centerpiece of their effort to challenge — and overturn — his defeat. That campaign included Trump’s infamous call urging Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse the result.

Since then, the Trump-aligned Georgia State Election Board has become a more powerful and combative force in an “election integrity” campaign. It has pushed tighter voting rules while raising doubts about voting systems and election results.

The board has also repeatedly attacked Raffensperger, portraying him as either incapable of running Georgia’s elections or unwilling to do so honestly.

Late last month, the board sent a letter to the Justice Department, asking the Trump administration for “intervention” in Georgia’s elections over its voting systems and machines. The request has fueled fears that Trump — who has sought greater federal control over elections — could take aggressive steps affecting the midterms in one of the country’s most closely watched battlegrounds.

Trump and his allies’ actions denying Georgia’s 2020 results became a central piece of racketeering charges against him and over a dozen of his supporters. After years of investigations, grand juries, court maneuverings, and a wild Fulton County mug shot, the case eventually crumbled before moving ahead or going to trial due to a botched prosecution.

The FBI served a search warrant to the Fulton County election warehouse outside Atlanta in January, taking roughly 700 boxes of election material to probe alleged vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The effort, fueled in part by 2020 election skeptics, drew sharp criticism from Raffensperger and other officials from both parties.

“Worst possible scenario: Election Day, before the votes are counted, they come in, confiscate the ballots, take them off,” Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts told CNN. “What I’ve learned with this administration, the impossible is always possible. We’re prepared though.”

There are also concerns — even in Republican-leaning areas — about possible federal action in the election. In Cherokee County, the director of elections made a supplemental presentation for poll workers on what to do if federal agents come to polling locations.

An election board invites Trump in

On September 30, Georgia State Election Board Executive Director James Mills sent a formal request to federal officials seeking Justice Department involvement in a series of election-related concerns.

The five-page letter, addressed to US Attorney General Todd Blanche, Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, asked federal authorities to investigate Georgia’s voting system, review software updates for Dominion voting equipment, examine alleged security and ballot-secrecy vulnerabilities and preserve election records under federal supervision.

Mills did not respond to CNN’s questions or request for comment about the letter.

This latest chapter of political fallout from 2020 is part of a yearslong struggle between Georgia’s five-member State Election Board, which writes election rules and investigates alleged violations, and Raffensperger, whose office has been tasked with administering elections statewide since January 2019.

Republican Janelle King, who joined the board in 2024, argues Georgia’s voting system remains out of compliance with state law. She points to concerns that voters cannot independently verify QR codes printed on ballots and raises broader questions about ballot security and secrecy.

“The system itself has proven that there are vulnerabilities, whether they were exploited or not, that’s obviously up for debate,” King told CNN.

She argues that the board’s letter to the Department of Justice is justified and that its intervention is badly needed.

“It’s basically letting the secretary of state know that as the State Election Board, we are aware that Georgia’s elections are not in compliance,” King told CNN. “So we want you to fix this. And the fact that you’re not listening to us, you’re not listening to the people, maybe you will listen to the DOJ.”

King said she looks forward to working with “new blood” in the next secretary of state, regardless of their party affiliation, now that Raffensperger’s second four-year term is coming to an end.

But other current and former officials are eager to defend the state’s efforts.

“It’s obviously safe to vote in Georgia; our systems are secure,” said Gabe Sterling, who recently left his position as Georgia’s top voting manager, where he had been Raffensperger’s right-hand man since 2019.

“We have fantastic professionals who run county offices, and that’s where the rubber meets the road, Sterling told CNN.

The longtime Republican, who spent years as the chief operating officer in the secretary of state’s office and is now a senior fellow with Secure Democracy USA, said he has “very few actual real concerns” that Georgia’s voting systems could be tampered with, but does worry about potential online meddling from outside bad actors.

“The Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese continue to do those same things in social media, emails, websites to try to exacerbate difficulties and exacerbate belief and outcomes,” he said.

Sterling witnessed firsthand that dangerous rhetoric can lead to threats made to election officials, and said he’s thankful that the state election board Republican members “have no real power” and have been smacked down by the Georgia Supreme Court as well as fined for violating open records acts.

“They are just bad actors,” Sterling stressed, adding that the executive director “is now just going completely off the rails.”

Critics warn of eroding public trust

Secretary of state officials and the board’s Democratic member echo Sterling, saying the latest effort is less about election security than sowing doubt about election results.

“We have the most accurate election in the entire country,” Raffensperger told CNN in an interview in his office.

He strongly pushed back on the claims in the election board letter, saying that it “wasn’t supported by the facts.”

“We’re going to make sure that we have free, fair, and fast elections,” Raffensperger said, “the voters trust the process that we have here in Georgia.”

Raffensperger, who lost the Republican primary for Georgia governor this year and will leave office in January, was not concerned about the possibility of federal interference and noted that his office has been a “great partner” to the Department of Justice.

Democratic board member Sara Tindall Ghazal told CNN that the board has become “a platform for wild conspiracy theorists.”

Ghazal called Mills’ letter a “predictable bad-faith effort to undermine confidence in our election and lay the groundwork to contest election results they do not like.”

Last May, the election board gave Trump’s Justice Department a blueprint for obtaining a criminal search warrant for its Fulton County raid.

The Justice Department, using a grand jury, also demanded details about thousands of election workers who assisted Fulton County in the 2020 vote-counting. Those investigations are ongoing.

In a recent interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon defended the Trump administration’s election related investigation.

Dhillon said that “absent some shocking contingency that is unexpected, there should be no interruption in the usual course of counting and certifying the results in the states.”

Who ultimately oversees Georgia’s elections?

At the center of the dispute is a fundamental question that is likely to persist beyond November: How much authority should the State Election Board wield compared with the independently elected secretary of state? And will DOJ try to insert itself?

The board has five voting members: a chairman appointed by the governor; one member appointed by the state Senate; one member appointed by the state House; and two members selected by state political parties, one Democrat and one Republican.

Since Mills was appointed to the executive director job in 2025, he has repeatedly clashed with the board’s chairman, John Fervier.

Fervier, a vice president of risk management at Waffle House, was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2024, but often finds himself voting alongside Ghazal, the board’s lone Democrat.

The latest controversy comes as Georgia voters prepare to elect a new secretary of state, who will inherit responsibility for managing elections and navigating the increasingly tense relationship with the election board.

Democrat Penny Brown Reynolds, a former Fulton County judge who also served in a federal civil rights role during the Biden administration, says the state’s elections have become a target of politically motivated attacks.

“This is the state of Congressman John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. and so many of our civil rights leaders who marched and protested and died for the right to vote,” Reynolds told CNN. She said many of the current disputes are driven by “fear tactics” that are “built on fear and confusion.”

Her Republican opponent, state Rep. Tim Fleming, is a former deputy secretary of state and chief of staff to Kemp. Fleming has campaigned heavily on his experience managing state government operations and argues he is best positioned to succeed Raffensperger. Fleming did not respond to CNN’s requests for an interview.

The Republican has championed voter ID requirements, hand-marked paper ballots and other election-integrity measures.

Reynolds said she supports continuing Georgia’s use of voting machines while also exploring broader use of hand-marked paper ballots. If elected, she pledged to defend voting rights against what she describes as ongoing efforts to undermine public confidence in elections.

“What Raffensperger did in standing up with regard to that telephone call and standing up to the unfounded claims that somehow the election was not free, fair, and secure, and legal … because he would not do the bidding of his Republican colleagues, they retaliated,” Reynolds told CNN.

And if she wins her race, “I’ll have my hands full,” she said.

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