ATLANTA — Today, Fair Fight Action alongside the Center for Popular Democracy, Common Cause Georgia, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, and Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates sent a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in response to his reckless and dangerous rhetoric casting doubt on Fulton County’s elections administration and calling on him to “reject any partisan attempt to take over Fulton County elections through Senate Bill 202 or through any other means.”
As the letter outlines, Raffensperger has spent months using “the authority and resources of [his] office to amplify and legitimize disinformation pushed by the same figures and outlets who sought to undermine the election.” After previously defending the integrity of the November 2020 election, Raffensperger has “embraced ongoing attempts by Fulton-centric conspiracy theorists to sow doubt in an election.” He has “winked and nodded to the likes of a 9/11 truther and a bamboo-fiber-obsessed treasure hunter who are spearheading the Fulton County ballot resurrection and known for pushing violent election conspiracies,” putting election workers at risk to protect his own political future.
Raffensperger even promoted a far-right report written by “a participant in the January 6 insurrection” about Fulton County mail ballot forms and “announced a potential investigation, citing as justification the insurrection participant’s so-called ‘new revelations.’” But after these “revelations” were proven false, Raffensperger “did not bother to retract [his] unfounded attacks on Fulton elections officials.”
Time and time again, Raffensperger has not been an advocate for Fulton voters and Fulton election workers. Instead, he supported GOP’s anti-voter law SB 202, which “took away 30 of Fulton’s 38 very popular ballot drop boxes,” “eliminated the county’s successful mobile voting program,” and “criminalizes the act of a volunteer handing a Fulton County voter a bottle of water as they wait in line” — all while allowing for a state takeover of local boards of election. Now, Fair Fight Action and other civil and voting rights groups are calling on Raffensperger to formally reject any effort to make “an unprecedented partisan power grab that vilifies county election officials as a smokescreen for [his] office’s failures,” and commit to not orchestrating a state takeover of the Fulton County Board of Elections.
Read the full letter here.
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