Georgia State Election Board: The MAGA Majority

The current incarnation of the Georgia State Election Board, the body which oversees Georgia’s election administration, has been heavily shaped by the election denial movement and the fallout from Biden’s victory in Georgia in 2020. A 2024 law removed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, one of only a handful of Republicans to find a backbone and say “no” to Trump in 2020, and paved the way for the appointment of a MAGA majority that has spent its time looking for ways to exceed its authority and inviting federal investigations and interference into Georgia’s elections.

Worst moments:

• The current majority formed after the legislature removed the official who said no to Trump in favor of an original grassroots election conspiracy theorist, a conservative media personality, and a party operative.
• Asked Trump to intervene in Georgia’s elections and declare the state’s voting machines illegal just two weeks before early voting.

History of election denial

Following Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s noted refusal to “find” extra votes for Donald Trump in 2020, the Georgia legislature passed a law removing Raffensperger from the State Election Board. Under the new rules, MAGA Republicans have consolidated their majority on the board:

• Salleigh Grubbs One of the original grassroots purveyors of Georgia election denial, Grubbs followed a truck from a Cobb County vote-counting facility falsely believing it contained shredded ballots. Grubbs used election denial as a stepping stone into politics, being elected Cobb GOP chair before becoming first vice chair of the state party. Grubbs was appointed to the board by Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, a major election denier in his own right.
• Janelle King Before being appointed as one of the officials overseeing Georgia's elections, King’s entire professional career consists of positions as a conservative media figure or Republican party operative. Named to the board by the Georgia House of Representatives, state GOP party chair Josh McKoon celebrated King’s appointment as the move that secured the majority for the election-denial faction of the party. On the board King has voted for further rounds of investigations into Fulton County “despite warnings from fellow board members that [the] decision was illegal,” and was praised by name by Donald Trump.
• Carolyn Roddy The newest member of the board, Roddy was appointed directly by the Georgia Republican party, and soon defined herself as a hardline opponent of fair elections by introducing the resolution asking the Trump administration to declare Georgia’s voting machines illegal.

Influence over election administration

Following in the footsteps of a previously constituted Republican majority on the Board, which made repeated attempts to issue new rules on how Georgia elections are tabulated and certified only to have those rules found to be “illegal, unconstitutional and void” due to being “unsupported by Georgia’s Election Code,” the current MAGA majority has shown an affinity for exceeding its lawful authority. Soon after Roddy was appointed, completing the current majority, the Board voted 3-2 to adopt a rule demanding access to the secretary of state's election-night operations center, despite the attorney general's warning that it exceeded the board's authority.

But perhaps the greatest focus of the MAGA majority on the State Election Board has been its attempts to relitigate the 2020 vote in Fulton County, a favorite subject of election conspiracy theories. After an investigation that closed without finding any mistakes that would have altered Biden’s victory in Georgia, the Board voted to refer the case to the Georgia Attorney General, despite warnings from the minority that the board could be violating the law by repeatedly prosecuting the same case. In July 2025 they voted to ask the DOJ to force Fulton to turn over 2020 documents, inviting the January 2026 raid that seized hundreds of boxes of election records from Georgia’s most populous county.

Now, the Board has stepped up its attacks on Georgia’s election system as Republicans prepare for a major loss in the 2026 midterms. With roughly two weeks before the start of early voting, the MAGA majority and Executive Director Mills have asked Trump’s DOJ to declare the state’s voting machines illegal. Soon after the resolution passed, Mills went rogue, exceeding his authority by asking Trump’s DOJ to compel state and county officials to install specific newer software before November and to ban QR-code tabulation outright under a binding six-month deadline. Grubbs, who voted for the resolution that empowered Mills, expressed frustration with his conduct and said that it had “troubled her [...] deeply,” but still wouldn’t commit to voting to remove him. The MAGA majority is upset to be reaping what it sowed as its handpicked Executive Director invites federal interference amid efforts by the Trump administration to meddle in Georgia’s elections, but they don’t seem to have the courage to undo it.