Georgia GOP Censures Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for ‘Dereliction of His Constitutional Duty’

The Georgia Republican Party censured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday for “dereliction of his constitutional duty.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein tweeted the details of the censure:

A Resolution to Censure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

WHEREAS, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger failed to perform his duties in accordance with the laws and Constitution of the state of Georgia, and Republican Party values, including but not limited to:

• Entering into the Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release, which changed Georgia’s absentee voting procedures outside the Constitutionally prescribed format set forth in Georgia law.
• Undermining the security of our elections by allowing mass mailings of absentee applications by his office and third parties which created opportunities for fraud and overwhelmed election offices; rendering accurate signature matching nearly impossible; allowing ballot drop boxes without proper chain of custody; and ignoring sworn affidavits and evidence of voter fraud; and

WHEARAS, the fecklessness and failures of Secretary Raffensperger were enabled by the actions and inactions by others such as Lt. Governor Duncan, who denied that there was election fraud and punished Georgia Republican State Senators who asked for election audits; Attorney General Carr, who allowed his office to file an amicus brief opposing the lawsuit asking for inspection of the Fulton County absentee ballots; and legislative leaders who failed to fully address known election issues prior to the runoff; all have, either by their direct action or inaction, significantly eroded confidence in our state’s election system.

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Georgia Republican Party Convention censures Secretary Raffensperger for dereliction of his Constitutional duty; and calls on Governor Kemp and all elected officials to repair the damage that has been done and commit themselves to securing Georgia’s elections.

Here’s a version of the resolution that just passed at the GOP convention that “censured” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for “dereliction of his Constitutional duty” and calls on @GovKemp to “repair the damage that has been done.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/l5mE8Mbg9L

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) June 5, 2021

 

Neither Secretary of State Raffensperger, a Republican who has announced he is running for re-election, nor Lt. Governor Duncan, a Republican who has announced he is not running for re-election, attended the Georgia  GOP Convention.

Governor Brian Kemp, who has announced he is running for re-election, did attend, but his appearance was initially greeted with loud boos, as WSB reported:

Trump has long made clear his intentions to target Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, for their parts in ratifying Biden’s victory.

Kemp faced the consequences of not backing the former president’s claims on Saturday when he was booed and taunted as he gave a speech.

As Breitbart News reported in April:

On November 10, Breitbart News reported, “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) is rejecting high profile calls for his resignation over his handling of the presidential election in his state, emphasizing in a statement released on Monday that he will not step down.” Both then-Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and then-Senator David Perdue (R-GA) had called for Raffensperger’s resignation earlier that day.

In December, f0r instance, Breitbart News reported that, “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has no idea how many of the 1.3 million absentee ballots counted in the state in the November 3 general election were delivered by mail and how many were collected and delivered from the 300 absentee ballot drop boxes he and the Georgia State Election Board approved for use in the election.”

“We don’t know how many absentee ballots arrived by mail versus drop box. The counties can tell you,” a spokesperson for Raffensperger told Breitbart News at the time.

In December, Breitbart News reported:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and the Georgia State Election Board authorized the use of 300 absentee ballot drop boxes for the November 3, 2020, general election, beginning 49 days before the election, in a July 2020 election code rule.

Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, said that a number of election security concerns were not addressed in Georgia’s election code rule regarding the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in Georgia and elsewhere.

“Who were the vendors that collected the ballots from the drop boxes? Where are the logs of their receipt by the vendor at the drop box and subsequent delivery to the election board? How do we know that these ballots were not tampered with, or that a number of them were not discarded along the way from the drop box to the election board?” Kline said to Breitbart News in an exclusive interview. . .

Breitbart News contacted the Georgia Secretary of State’s office for a response to Kline’s criticisms. Specifically, Breitbart News asked if the secretary of state’s office keeps copies of the ballot transfer forms required under the election code rule any time absentee ballots are transferred from the ballot drop box to the election offices and if those forms have been reviewed and monitored for time of delivery and chain of custody. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said each county kept those forms. . .

Many of these absentee ballot drop boxes were paid for by a private party — the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which made the placement of these drop boxes a requirement for local counties that received grants and also funded additional election workers who transported ballots from the drop boxes to local election offices.

 

Secretary of State Raffensperger’s office responded to the news that the GOP Convention had censured him by stating, “The Secretary of States Office, county election directors and the tens of thousands of poll workers across the state worked to ensure that democracy was upheld. It is the job of counties to run elections and the secretary of states office’s job to report those election results– it is the job of the political parties to deliver wins for their candidates. Let’s not confuse the two.”