More issues with the upcoming 2024 election. Again in Georgia which had election counting issues in 2020. Now, election deniers are openly planning.

Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result, US elections 2024, The Guardian.

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.

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. The article began . . .

“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate elections officials, 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 of their duty to certify results was not discretionary. This was done 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.” Saying the letter was “Orwellian to demand election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote”.

The author of the article was not named on the United Tea Party of Georgia’s website. The emails obtained by Crew show it was Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. He 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. Posted the same day he published the article.

Receiving the email were a handful of county election officials expressing belief in Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020. They have continued to implement policies, and push for additional rules. This is based on the belief of widespread election fraud resulting 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” and not a 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 rest of the article can be found here: Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result | US elections 2024, The Guardian