Georgia raid exposes 'the real problem for Republicans': analysis

“Here we go again,” said Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Patricia Murphy, referring to Georgia GOP senators’ rehashing the 2020 election for their party leader President Donald Trump.

“More than five years after the 2020 election that … Trump lost and four years after the heated debate over Republicans’ elections overhaul bill that followed, Georgia state senators were again arguing Monday over 2020, election security and whether the federal government should have access to the state’s full, unredacted voter rolls.”

The chamber is mulling a resolution this session calling on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to send the state’s full voting rolls — complete with Georgians’ partial Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and other sensitive data — to Trump’s politicized U.S. Department of Justice. Raffensperger has refused to provide all of the information, saying state law bars him from sharing it with third parties and that the Constitution dictates state wield control of state elections.

But the Georgia Senate debate was really about whether the State of Georgia or Trump should control state elections. Senators also considered whether Trump should get final say over which voters to boot off rolls. Republican senators were eager to play down the ramifications, with GOP state senator Randy Robertson boasting he could hire a private investigator to pull down the same sensitive voter information. Republican state senator Ed Setzler argued that Georgia should share its full data rolls because only the guilty have something to “hide,” reports Murphy.

Democrats, however, were wary of giving a president like Trump the weapons to toss voters’ ballots, and they were quick to castigate Republicans obediently following Trump’s orders.

“I’m not saying Trump is literally your daddy, but …” chided Democratic state Sen. Josh McLaurin.

“Get some guts,” howled Democratic state senator David Lucas, arguing against the motion. “Get some guts and do the right thing. That’s how you can get elected.”

Trump’s FBI raid in Fulton County, along with the president’s fixation on relitigating the 2020 elections in Georgia, ramped up the debate intensity.

“And therein lies the real problem for Republicans,” said Murphy. “Because in every recent election when Republicans focused on election security and ‘rigged’ elections, it hasn’t ended well. In 2021, when Trump told packed rallies that Georgia elections couldn’t be trusted, Democrats won two Senate runoffs and flipped control of the U.S. Senate from Republican to Democrat. In 2022, Trump’s hand-picked, ‘the-election-was-rigged’ loyalists lost by a mile in GOP statewide primaries, while Kemp and Raffensperger, who eventually said Trump had lost, not only won their primaries but went on to be Republicans’ strongest statewide performers in November.”

“And yet, here we are again,” continued Murphy, “with an election looming, voters saying clearly they’re focused on the economy, and the federal government is raiding Georgia elections offices and demanding voter rolls while the president threatens to prosecute officials in Georgia over the 2020 elections, including possibly Republicans.”

Murphy notedTrump has continued spreading his election lies, telling podcaster Dan Bongino: “We have states that I won, that show I didn’t win. You’re going to see something in Georgia, where they were able to get, with a court order, the ballots. I won that election by so much, and everybody knows it.”

Only they don’t, said Murphy, because they’re lies, and voters know it. Voters also tend to vote against lawmakers who go along with Trump’s fabrications.

But what’s important right now is the independence of the state in the face of an authoritarian president, said Murphy.

“… [I]if [lawmakers] don’t stand up and defend the state’s elections now, just as they did in 2020, Georgia may not run its elections at all after this,” Murphy said.

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