New Report: Georgia Republicans Can’t Beat Georgia Voters, So They’re Trying to Take Over Georgia’s Elections

Today, Try And Stop Us released a new report exposing Georgia Republicans’ five-year campaign to seize control of the state’s elections after Georgia voters beat Donald Trump in 2020. Two weeks before early voting, Republicans on the state election board voted 3-2 to invite Trump’s Justice Department and Homeland Security into Georgia’s voting machines. The board’s executive director then asked the Trump administration to investigate Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger without full board approval.

Georgia Republicans have been coming after Raffensperger since he refused Trump’s demand to “find” the votes to overturn his 2020 loss. Republican lawmakers answered with SB 202, which stripped Raffensperger of his chairmanship of the state election board, then kicked him off the board entirely in 2024. The Trump allies left in charge, whom Trump calls his “pitbulls,” passed rules giving county officials room to refuse to certify results until the Georgia Supreme Court threw them out.

So Georgia Republicans called in Trump’s federal government. The board’s Trump-aligned majority voted to seek the administration’s help reopening 2020, and in January, the FBI seized roughly 700 boxes of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots on a referral from a Trump White House lawyer who had pushed to overturn that election. Trump’s DOJ also sued Raffensperger for every Georgia voter’s birth date, driver’s license number and partial Social Security number, and lost in court twice.

Now Georgia Republicans have nominated election deniers for governor, secretary of state and U.S. Senate, and a new law requires hand recounts in close state races, adding up to 17 days to the count ahead of a possible December 1 runoff. That gives a Trump-friendly board and Trump’s DOJ weeks to sow doubt about results they don’t like.

Georgia Republicans couldn’t beat Georgia voters in 2020, so they are coming for the count in 2026.

A full copy of the report can be found here.