Georgia’s Senate Ethics Committee approved a bill proposing to remove Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from the State Election Board after a computer expert proved election fraud in Georgia.
The bill, Senate Bill 358, empowers the board to investigate the Secretary of State and local election officials for election interference. It will also empower the board to acquire their investigators contrary to the present mandate, which only relied on the Secretary of State’s office to do so.
Senator Max Burns, who sponsored the bill, said that the bill was motivated by a debate among Board of Elections members last year.
According to Burns, “Last year, in the December meeting of the state election board, there was some discussion about whether or not the board had responsibility and oversight of the Secretary of State and the Office of the Secretary of State and their elections division.”
The board’s decision was split, 2-2.
According to Georgia Record, the move to investigate the secretary of state began when he failed to investigate the 2020 election fraud exposed by Joseph Rossi, a citizen election integrity advocate.
“These initial findings and an inability to obtain explanations from Raffensperger’s office led Rossi to provide the evidence to Governor Brian Kemp’s office which performed its independent analysis and then issued a written finding saying that Rossi’s results were factual.”
Rossi also reported during the December 19th state election board investigation that since the time of Kemp’s report in 2021, investigators, and assistant AG McGowan, (who now serves as Raffensperger general counsel), as well as some members of the SEB, attempted to block investigations from the troves of evidence presented.
The secretary of state also opted to attend a “rotary meeting” in Southern Georgia instead of appearing before the Senate Ethics Committee in November.
Attorney Charlene McGowan, general counsel of Raffensperger, opposed the proposal and said, “There is no precedent for an unelected board of political appointees to have oversight over members of the executive branch.”
She also maliciously called the motion to check the state’s executive branch as a “dangerous policy proposal.”
However, the committee disagreed and voted to advance the Senate bill.
“We’re looking to empower the State Election Board so that they can have oversight responsibility and that there’s no confusion about where that oversight responsibility is vested,” Burns added.
Raffensperger and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp previously denied Trump’s remarks in 2020 about election fraud in Georgia.
However, by June 2021, the secretary of state began changing his tune as the findings from the audit revealed severe irregularities.
