CNN
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The Georgia State Board of Elections meeting turned contentious Monday as two members of the Republican-controlled board defended their reasons for approving a controversial new election rule requiring county election officials to manually count the number of ballots cast on Election Day.
Friday’s vote was 3-2, with three Trump allies supporting the move and a GOP-appointed Democratic and independent council member strongly opposing it, calling it another step that could delay the presidential election results in the key state.
Last month, Trump praised the three GOP members for their efforts.
On Monday, one of those Republicans, Dr. Janice Johnson, called out what she called media inaccuracies and partisan attacks.
“The so-called news is presented as a scary fairy tale or perhaps an end-of-the-world apocalypse tale,” Johnson said. “Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down, all because of the focus on the mundane and unexciting processes of the chain of custody.”
Monday’s meeting was a continuation of Friday’s agenda and was supposed to be a routine meeting until council members began bickering.
Johnson’s speech was followed by a heated exchange between Republican Janelle King, a media personality who is the council’s newest member, and Sara Tindall Ghazal, the council’s lone serving Democrat. King criticized Ghazal’s appearance on MSNBC, where she questioned her colleagues’ goals.
“You’re creating a conspiracy based on an assumption… you’re alluding to the fact that we’re doing something that’s somehow dishonest, simply because you don’t agree,” King said.
“I am concerned that this council is acting in a manner that the attorney general has declared to be illegal,” Ghazal responded.
“I am concerned that you would go on national television and assume that we are working on a media agenda, because I have not spoken to the Trump campaign,” King said. “I have nothing to do with the Trump campaign.”
Johnson then used sharp rhetoric to hit back at what she sees as a grossly unfair reaction to her work.
“As I reflected on this weekend, I thought, yes, smear campaign, media murder, yes, and judicial lynching. That’s where this is going and I really don’t like it,” Johnson said.
Throughout the bickering that erupted at the start of Monday’s meeting, John Fervier, the council’s volunteer, nonpartisan chairman appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, tried unsuccessfully to bring the council back to order, banging his gavel frequently while calling the discussion “inappropriate.”
“It bothers me a lot when there is public criticism within the council,” Fervier told CNN on Monday, adding that he preferred such issues to be handled privately.
The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, told the elections board in a letter obtained by CNN on Thursday that several of its proposed rules “highly likely” go beyond the board’s legal authority and “conflict” with existing state election laws. The letter warned the board that their changes could “easily be challenged and found invalid.”
A lawyer for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, also sent a scathing two-page letter to the state Board of Elections last week, warning that the new rules are impossible since “many poll workers have already completed their mandatory training.”
The overhaul of the electoral board in one of the most critical 2024 states shows how some Republicans who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election have now assumed a leading role in setting election rules and, in some areas, overseeing elections.
The five-person election board was once led by Georgia’s secretary of state. But after 2020, Trump fought to overturn his defeat in the Peach State, pressuring Raffensperger to “find” the thousands of votes Trump needed to win. Raffensperger refused, and the state’s GOP-led legislature subsequently removed the secretary from his position as a board member.
CNN’s Mounira Elsamra contributed to this report.
