GOP officials pursue eleventh-hour fight for access to the secretary of state’s election night hub

(Georgia Recorder) — Georgia’s State Election Board, the state Republican Party and multiple Republican candidates are demanding access to the secretary of state’s election night hub during Tuesday’s state primary election.

With less than a day to go before the election, state Sen. Greg Dolezal, who is running for lieutenant governor, congressional candidate Chris Mora and Cobb County Commissioner Keli Gambrill have also filed an emergency motion against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Fulton County Superior Court, seeks to give election observers and State Election Board representatives access to the hub, known as the emergency operations center.

Though the secretary of state’s election night reporting activities are conducted at the emergency operations center, no ballot counting takes place on site and the hub is not a polling place, early voting location or tabulation center. According to Attorney General Chris Carr’s office, that makes it exempt from state laws requiring poll watchers to have access to the areas where votes are being counted.

“The Georgia Election Code as written does not appear to contain any provision requiring the Secretary to allow members of the Board to attend election night reporting activities,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Young wrote in a letter to State Election Board Chair John Fervier last week.

However, numerous GOP figures have argued that Raffensperger, a Republican candidate for governor, is trying to keep Republican officials from accessing election night data.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, another Republican candidate for governor, called for the U.S. Department of Justice to step in and monitor the election.

State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs, who also serves as the first vice chair of the Georgia Republican Party, also expressed mistrust of Raffensperger during a board meeting Thursday.

“We have the chief elections officer of the state of Georgia overseeing that entire operation, who happens to be on the ballot for governor, and I think that that is a huge conflict of interest,” Grubbs said. “I believe that the State Election Board does have oversight duties and responsibilities there.”

Grubbs also urged the board to seek independent legal counsel after the attorney general’s office declared that board members have no right under state law to oversee the process.

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, accused board members of overstepping their role.

“This is a manufactured nonissue,” Sinners said. “The SEB has no oversight role over the secretary, and once again, they do not understand their statutory purpose.”