Rick Jackson and Mike Collins: Election Deniers for Georgia

Rick Jackson and Mike Collins are, respectively, the Republican nominees for Governor and Senator in this year’s election in Georgia. Both men entered politics after 2020, and have built their political brands on election denial.

Worst moments:

• Jackson ran ads calling primary opponent Brad Raffensperger “Judas” for refusing to meet Trump’s demands to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 presidential election and expressed openness to deploying the Georgia national guard at the polls to “watch out” for Democrats cheating.
• Collins campaigned for his current office with a video where he claims Trump rightfully won Georgia in 2020 and opens fire on a voting machine, and consistently attempts to portray January 6 insurrectionists as peaceful protestors who were treated unjustly.
• Both are supporters of Trump’s attempts to put federal pressure on Georgia election officials, including the raid on Fulton County election offices.

History of election denial

Jackson and Collins both entered politics in the post-2020 environment and aligned themselves with election denial to gain standing within the MAGA movement.

A campaign video posted during Collins’ 2022 Congressional campaign features Collins, carrying a gun, saying: “You count the legal votes that were cast in the state of Georgia? Donald Trump won this state, period.” He then opens fire on a prop voting machine. Bloomberg reported that Collins used stolen-election content to grow his Facebook engagement, with such posts outperforming his average by more than six times. Collins has continued to stand by his repetitions of false conspiracies deep into the 2026 campaign. After securing the nomination, Collins said of Georgia in 2020: “Trump won that race.” Trump's endorsement emphasized election denial as a reason for MAGA voters to support Collins, attacking primary rival Derek Dooley for having said Trump lost Georgia in 2020.

Meanwhile, asked at a campaign stop whether he thought the 2020 election was stolen, Jackson said: “That was totally ridiculous what happened in 2020 and our people really let us down.” Jackson launched his campaign with an ad depicting primary opponent Brad Raffensperger as “Judas” for refusing Trump's demands to overturn the 2020 election, accusing him of having “turned on his own kind.” Notably, while Jackson's other ads ran almost entirely in Georgia markets, this one also ran in Washington, D.C., and West Palm Beach — where Mar-a-Lago is located.

Collins also appealed to MAGA conspiracies about the January 6 insurrection. Appearing at the “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, Collins referred to jailed January 6 defendants as political prisoners. In January 2025, on the fourth anniversary of the attack, Collins posted a revisionist account describing insurrectionists as “peaceful grandmothers” who “walked to the Capitol to peacefully protest the certification" before being “hunted down” and “treated unjustly.” Back here in reality, rioters forced their way in, lawmakers evacuated or sheltered, damage ran into the millions, and one person died that day with other deaths following. At an August 2026 campaign event, a January 6 participant convicted of two felonies asked whether Collins would back the administration's roughly $1.8 billion “weaponization” compensation fund or similar relief. Collins answered: “That's easy, yes.” While a Collins spokesperson attempted to partially walk the statement back, the campaign stood by the position that some January 6 defendants had been “wronged by their government” and deserved a payout.

Influence over election administration

If elected, Jackson and Collins would both have substantial ability to wield power on behalf of the election denial movement. Jackson would hold the authority to issue the certificate of ascertainment for Georgia’s 2028 electoral votes and could give executive approval to voting restrictions passed by the legislature, while Collins would be a vote in the Senate for federal voting restrictions like the SAVE Act, which could disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters, disproportionately affecting women. Jackson has also expressed openness to troop deployments at the polls, reportedly telling a supporter who said he feared Democrats would cheat in November that “we’re going to have people watching out for us” before invoking the national guard.

But while their powers most exist separately, Collins and Jackson are aligned on their rhetorical support for federal actions that target Georgia.

On Jan. 28, 2026, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center and seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 ballots. An unsealed affidavit describes a criminal investigation into possible “deficiencies or defects” in the 2020 count, which the document says would violate federal law if intentional regardless of whether it changed any outcome. The warrant originated from a referral by Kurt Olsen, a presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity who had worked on litigation to nullify results in states Trump lost, and that the application cited a number of prominent election deniers.

Both Collins and Jackson expressed support for federal actions targeting Fulton County. Collins vocally supported the raid and directed his public response at Trump’s FBI director, saying: “Go get 'em, Kash.” Asked in March what he would do about Dominion voting machines, Jackson said what happened in 2020 was “bizarre,” adding that it's really easy to believe that for the last 40 years, “Fulton County's been cheating on voting.” The evidence-free assertion of chronic fraud in Georgia's largest and most heavily Black county puts them in alignment with the Trump administration over Georgia officials, some of whom have publicly worried the raid could be used to justify a takeover of Fulton County's elections in 2026.

Two prior high-profile reviews of Fulton County found problems but no fraud or misconduct, but elected officials who are less willing than current leadership has been to defend the results could lend major credibility to a set of conspiracy theories that Trump has used to renew calls to federalize election operations in some states. The current governor and secretary of state have thus far served as a limited institutional brake, most notably resisting Trump’s efforts to overturn the results in 2020, and both of Georgia’s current Senators have condemned federal pressure on the state. A reversal of this policy by Jackson and Collins would lend legitimacy and credibility to Trump’s efforts to wield government power to keep himself from losing again.