An attempt to state that Georgia’s appointed State Election Board has the legal power to investigate Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s handling of elections blossomed into a constitutional showdown Tuesday, with a lawyer for Raffensperger saying board members can’t legally oversee him.
“There is no precedent for an unelected board of political appointees to have oversight over members of the executive branch,” wrote Charlene McGowan, Raffensperger’s general counsel. “Giving a board of unelected bureaucrats unchecked power over the state’s executive branch is a dangerous policy proposal.”
But the Senate Ethics Committee disagreed, voting to advance Senate Bill 358. The proposal would remove Raffensperger from his nonvoting post on the board, allow the board to hire election investigators instead of solely relying on those working for Raffensperger and clearly give the board power to investigate the secretary of state.
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“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,” said Ethics Committee Chairman Max Burns, a Sylvania Republican.
It’s only part of a push by Republican lawmakers for changes in how elections are run in Georgia.
Raffensperger’s steadfast defense of Georgia’s 2020 election, which Democratic President Joe Biden narrowly won, and his rejection of a call by Donald Trump to “find” more Republican votes made him a national figure. But Raffensperger is also a pariah among many Republican activists, who continue pushing Trump’s false claims that Georgia’s 2020 results were marred by fraud and that Trump was the rightful winner. And those activists continue to exert pressure on Republican Georgia lawmakers, who face election this year.
Activists have been pushing the State Election Board to investigate…
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