Part 1‑Raffensperger and Kemp Cannot Be Trusted in 2024 Elections

Neither Raffensperger, Nor Kemp, Can Be Trusted

One would have to look long and hard to find an indi­vid­ual out­side Georgia’s prison sys­tem less trust­ed than Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of pre­vi­ous Sec­re­tary of State, now Geor­gia Gov­er­nor, Bri­an Kemp. Well before the 2020 elec­tion, Raf­fensperg­er and Kemp, togeth­er or sep­a­rate­ly, ini­ti­at­ed a course of events which would ulti­mate­ly destroy the cred­i­bil­i­ty of Georgia’s elec­tion sys­tem, each earn­ing a badge of per­son­al untrust­wor­thi­ness many times as events unfolded. 

As a result, until an hon­est, decen­tral­ized, ver­i­fi­able elec­tion sys­tem can be oper­at­ed in every vot­ing precinct in the state, the cit­i­zens of Geor­gia, by and large, will nev­er trust the results of statewide or local elec­tions again. Whether these two state offi­cials actu­al­ly con­spired to accom­plish the state of of affairs I describe, I can­not say. But the nec­es­sary ground­work to pro­ceed down a cer­tain intri­cate­ly-woven path of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy-mak­ing, each sub­ject doing his part, hap­pen­stance doing the rest, thus bring­ing Geor­gia to these unen­vi­able cir­cum­stances, reveals that dis­tinct possibility. 

Below, and in sub­se­quent con­tri­bu­tions, I will recount the many ways these two indi­vid­u­als, Brad Raf­fensperg­er and Bri­an Kemp, entrust­ed by Geor­gians with the high­est respon­si­bil­i­ties, destroyed that trust, now leav­ing our coun­ty elec­tion boards to decide whether the result­ing cir­cum­stances trig­ger law­ful author­i­ty to aban­don Georgia’s uni­form, statewide bal­lot mark­ing device (BMD) vot­ing sys­tem, deem­ing it legal­ly “imprac­ti­ca­ble,” opt­ing instead in favor of sim­ple, decen­tral­ized, ver­i­fi­able paper bal­lot sys­tems in time for the 2024 elec­tion season. 

Roots of Present Circumstances Date Back to August 2014

Franklin Roo­sevelt, a man who should know, once remarked, “In pol­i­tics, noth­ing hap­pens by chance. If it hap­pens, you can bet it was planned that way.” At the very heart of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is its elec­tion sys­tem. If the 32nd Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, elect­ed to that office four times, is cor­rect, we can expect that the state of affairs exist­ing today con­cern­ing Georgia’s belea­guered “Bal­lot Mark­ing Device” vot­ing sys­tem, did not hap­pen by chance. If Roo­sevelt was right, “you can bet it was planned that way.”

But prop­er plan­ning and exe­cu­tion takes time. Whether any of the fol­low­ing events were orches­trat­ed, as FDR might expect, is less impor­tant than the fact that these events occurred exact­ly as I present. And the fact that they occurred as doc­u­ment­ed below, has result­ed in a gen­er­al, intense dis­trust of the Geor­gia elec­tion sys­tem as it has come to be, first under for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp, now Georgia’s Gov­er­nor, and sub­se­quent­ly under the direct super­vi­sion of present Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raffensperger. 

The events to which I refer can be traced back to a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous, polit­i­cal ral­ly in Daw­sonville, Geor­gia, held at an oper­at­ing pump­kin farm in August of 2014. The events of that day, known to many as “Pump­kingate,” pro­vide a rec­og­niz­able frame of ref­er­ence for all that has occurred since, lead­ing to our cir­cum­stances today. 

Who was there?

Present that day to hold a fun-filled Repub­li­can cam­paign ral­ly at the pump­kin farm were sev­er­al notable politi­cians, includ­ing Gov­er­nor Nathan Deal, 9th Dis­trict US Con­gress­man Doug Collins, US Sen­ate can­di­date David Per­due and a not-so-well-known Geor­gia Attor­ney Gen­er­al by the name of Sam Olens. That was the fate­ful day cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist Nydia Tis­dale was forcibly arrest­ed by a Daw­son Coun­ty law-enforce­ment offi­cer. Her crime was video­ing the event’s speech­es once the offi­cer told her to stop. 

After the arrest, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Olens took the micro­phone, like­ly offend­ing the oth­er can­di­dates present that day, includ­ing Gov­er­nor Deal, who hav­ing wit­nessed the vio­lent treat­ment of Ms. Tis­dale close up, chose rather to ignore all that hap­pened direct­ly in front of them, and instead stand safe­ly silent. Despite the chance of offend­ing the oth­er pump­kin farm politi­cians there mere­ly to cam­paign, Olens cap­tured the crowd’s atten­tion, bold­ly pro­claim­ing the following, 

“Let me be pos­si­bly polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect here a sec­ond. If we stand for any­thing as a par­ty, what are we afraid of with the lady hav­ing a cam­era, film­ing us? What are we say­ing here that shouldn’t be on film? What mes­sage are we send­ing? That because it’s pri­vate prop­er­ty they shouldn’t be film­ing? What is the harm?”

Two years lat­er, halfway through his term, Olens would resign the office of Geor­gia Attor­ney Gen­er­al, hav­ing tak­en the job of Pres­i­dent of Ken­ne­saw State Uni­ver­si­ty in Cobb Coun­ty, lat­er cit­ing “grow­ing par­ti­san­ship and fric­tion between pol­i­tics, pol­i­cy and law” as his rea­son. He would nev­er elu­ci­date beyond agree­ing to that state­ment. Despite no par­tic­u­lar train­ing or back­ground in edu­ca­tion, the offer to land soft­ly at Ken­ne­saw after resign­ing his posi­tion as Attor­ney Gen­er­al arrived from the late Geor­gia Uni­ver­si­ty Sys­tem Chan­cel­lor, Hank Huck­a­by, elect­ed to that posi­tion by the Geor­gia Board of Regents, each board mem­ber, impor­tant­ly, appoint­ed by and serv­ing at the plea­sure of fel­low pump­kin farm politi­cian, Geor­gia Gov­er­nor Nathan Deal. I can­not say whether the gov­er­nor engi­neered Olens’ depar­ture. I can­not say that because nei­ther Olens nor Deal have said much or any­thing, respec­tive­ly, con­cern­ing the AG’s sud­den deci­sion to resign. All we know is what FDR tells us giv­en the appear­ance that Deal arranged a some­what lat­er­al trans­fer for Olens. Gov­er­nor Deal’s direct appointees on the Geor­gia Board of Regents pos­sessed author­i­ty over the new hire to head Ken­ne­saw. Giv­en Olens’ back­ground and train­ing, he was not the most qual­i­fied can­di­date for the post. There­fore, the Regents would nev­er have made such an out­ly­ing appoint­ment with­out Deal’s intervention. 

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Olens’ res­ig­na­tion in hand, the gov­er­nor wast­ed no time mak­ing his own out­ly­ing appoint­ment, tap­ping the Com­mis­sion­er of the Geor­gia Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, Christo­pher Carr, to fill the open AG seat. Deal’s appoint­ment of Carr was “out­ly­ing” because pri­or to becom­ing Georgia’s head attor­ney, Chris Carr had nev­er tried a court­room case, a prac­ticed skill nor­mal­ly high­ly-regard­ed as a qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the job of Georgia’s head lawyer. Thus, strange­ly, after the dust set­tled, Ken­ne­saw State Uni­ver­si­ty had a new pres­i­dent who had no back­ground in edu­ca­tion, and the State of Geor­gia had a new Attor­ney Gen­er­al who had nev­er argued a court­room case.

Almost iron­i­cal­ly, in the after­math of the 2020 elec­tion, Chris Carr’s first court­room case would place him before the US Supreme Court in Wash­ing­ton, DC, defend­ing the State of Geor­gia, and in par­tic­u­lar, acts by Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er, in a Texas law­suit joined by 16 oth­er states, over the leg­endary dis­put­ed pres­i­den­tial outcome. 

Control over Georgia’s Election System Seized by Secretary of State Kemp

Strange events seem to fol­low these pump­kin farm politi­cians around. I say that because dur­ing the time in ques­tion, almost pre­dictably, Ken­ne­saw State, the new employ­er of uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent Sam Olens, housed and oper­at­ed the Geor­gia Cen­ter for Elec­tion Sys­tems. Accord­ing to the Center’s web­site at the time, the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the elec­tion sys­tem oper­at­ing under uni­ver­si­ty aus­pices was to main­tain “an arms-length work­ing rela­tion­ship with the Sec­re­tary of State and the ven­dor, ensur­ing both inde­pen­dence and objec­tiv­i­ty in its work.” Think about that for a moment. The argu­ment lead­ing to this arrange­ment, in place for the pre­vi­ous 15 years, was that a sit­ting Sec­re­tary of State should not be in charge of a sys­tem under which his or her own elec­tion is deter­mined. That makes per­fect sense. In fact, that is why it is impor­tant for any elec­tion sys­tem to main­tain at least and arm’s length of sep­a­ra­tion not only between var­i­ous ven­dors sup­ply­ing vot­ing equip­ment and ser­vices, but also any can­di­dates run­ning for office, and cer­tain­ly any elect­ed offi­cials such as a sit­ting Sec­re­tary of State. Thus, to accom­plish that sep­a­ra­tion was the very rea­son Sam Olens’ new employ­er, Ken­ne­saw State, had been run­ning the Geor­gia Elec­tion Cen­ter all that time. But cir­cum­stances were about to work togeth­er to alter that arrange­ment. The rea­son for oper­at­ing the elec­tion cen­ter apart from the influ­ence of politi­cians run­ning for office under the very sys­tem they con­trol, was about to be over­rid­den by Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp. 

Olens Takes Criticism From All Sides

Sam Olens couldn’t catch a break, not as Attor­ney Gen­er­al and not as uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent. That is because, in Novem­ber 2016, short­ly after tak­ing office at Ken­ne­saw State a cyber expert work­ing for plain­tiffs in a law­suit over elec­tion sys­tem vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, alleged iden­ti­fy­ing a secu­ri­ty breach in the Ken­ne­saw elec­tion sys­tem, pos­si­bly by those pesky Rus­sians, unleash­ing a wave of attacks on Olens as well as accu­sa­tions of neg­li­gence against employ­ees respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing the sys­tem apart from polit­i­cal influ­ence. Mar­i­lyn Marks, for exam­ple, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Coali­tion for Good Gov­er­nance argued “a uni­ver­si­ty has no busi­ness play­ing such a crit­i­cal role in the over­sight of a state’s elec­tion infra­struc­ture.” Marks spoke freely about the fresh­ly-hired uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Olens, seem­ing­ly won­der­ing aloud to a reporter, “A strange pick is para­chut­ed in, Sam Olens, the only per­son they inter­viewed, sud­den­ly becomes the head of the uni­ver­si­ty. He doesn’t have any aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing. He’s not an edu­ca­tor.” And she was right. By all that is holy, at the time these rev­e­la­tions came to light, Sam Olens should have been Georgia’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al, with two years remain­ing in his term, not a uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent charged with ulti­mate over­sight of statewide elections. 

Are you begin­ning to see why none of this real­ly makes much sense? 

Announc­ing the change in pol­i­cy, on July 14, 2017, the AJC report­ed the fol­low­ing state­ment issued by Sec­re­tary of State Kemp, 

“Today my office and Ken­ne­saw State Uni­ver­si­ty exe­cut­ed what will be the final con­tract between our two enti­ties relat­ed to the Cen­ter for Elec­tion Sys­tems. The ever-chang­ing land­scape of tech­nol­o­gy demands that we change with it. 

“The Sec­re­tary of State’s office is equipped, trained and test­ed to han­dle these oper­a­tions in-house,” Kemp said. “I am con­fi­dent that this move will ensure Geor­gia con­tin­ues to have secure, acces­si­ble and fair elec­tions for years to come.”

In the same arti­cle, Sam Olens appar­ent­ly “over” the entire sit­u­a­tion, the pump­kin-farm-politi­cian-turned-Uni­ver­si­ty-Pres­i­dent effec­tive­ly declared a hearty “good rid­dance” to oper­at­ing the elec­tion cen­ter, his state­ment read­ing, “We sup­port the sec­re­tary of state’s deci­sion, and look for­ward to help­ing facil­i­tate a smooth transition.”

Five months lat­er, in Decem­ber of 2017, Ken­ne­saw State Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent Sam Olens would step down from his position.

Secretary of State Kemp Authorizes SAFE Commission, Soon Running to Become Georgia’s Governor

Cred­it­ing an ongo­ing law­suit and the report­ed Ken­ne­saw data breach as his jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, after announc­ing the change bring­ing elec­tion oper­a­tions under his own facil­i­ties, in April 2018 Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp announced the mem­bers of a new “SAFE” Com­mis­sion, which he would chair, assigned the task of “con­duct­ing ‘thor­ough dis­cus­sions on all options – includ­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of using all hand-marked paper bal­lots to all elec­tron­ic machines with a vot­er-ver­i­fied paper trail – and trav­el the state to solic­it feed­back from stake­hold­ers.” “SAFE” stood for “Secure, Acces­si­ble & Fair Elections.” 

The tan­gi­ble result of the SAFE Commission’s work would be a report pub­lished by new­ly-elect­ed Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er in Jan­u­ary 2019. By that time, pre­vi­ous Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp had become Georgia’s new gov­er­nor, which is anoth­er sto­ry, roots plant­ed firm­ly in the soil at the Daw­sonville pump­kin farm in August of 2014. I say that because yet anoth­er can­di­date trav­el­ing in the Repub­li­can car­a­van that day would play an instru­men­tal role in Kemp’s 2018 election. 

Trump Endorsement Wins Kemp the Republican Nomination

To become gov­er­nor, Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp would have to leapfrog the nat­ur­al front-run­ner, incum­bent Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Casey Cagle, run­ning for the same posi­tion. Cagle won the May pri­ma­ry hand­i­ly, albeit with­out a req­ui­site major­i­ty, lead­ing sec­ond place fin­ish­er Kemp by a com­mand­ing 14%. Cagle had the strong endorse­ment of out-going Gov­er­nor Nathan Deal. The Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor solid­ly led Kemp until a few days before the runoff, at which time Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump unex­pect­ed­ly chose to get involved in Georgia’s guber­na­to­r­i­al race, endors­ing Kemp in a Tweet. 

Grat­i­fied and excit­ed to receive Trump’s endorse­ment, Kemp rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed unwa­ver­ing sup­port for Trump look­ing for­ward to 2020, respond­ing to reporters, “It’s huge for us, to have his endorse­ment. I appre­ci­ate the pres­i­dent stand­ing with me – and I’ll be stand­ing with him in 2020.” In ret­ro­spect, we can see what Bri­an Kemp’s future “unwa­ver­ing sup­port” is real­ly worth. 

Won­der­ing how the endorse­ment real­ly came about, the Atlanta Jour­nal-Con­sti­tu­tion report­ed,

It’s unclear how Kemp won over the pres­i­dent, who has promi­nent back­ers in both campaigns. 

U.S. Sen. David Per­due and U.S. Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Son­ny Per­due – who tapped Kemp for the sec­re­tary of state job in 2010 — are both neu­tral in the race, and sev­er­al Per­due allies said they had no part in the endorsement.

Asked how he land­ed Trump’s sup­port, Kemp said: “Who knows? We’ve just been down here work­ing hard, try­ing to keep the momen­tum going on.”

Lat­er, dur­ing numer­ous ral­lies, Don­ald Trump would pub­licly reveal the Kemp endorse­ment direct­ly result­ed from a request by pump­kin-farm-politi­cian-turned-fresh­man-Sen­a­tor, David Per­due. All this makes one won­der what might have occurred had a few storms that day required the pump­kin farm event to cancel. 

The Takeaway

Notwith­stand­ing var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties of inner-work­ings among the pump­kin farm politi­cians, the impor­tant knowl­edge a read­er should take from all this is that, each of these rela­tion­ships worked togeth­er either by design or hap­pen­stance, to bring about the con­di­tions under which major changes in the oper­a­tion of Georgia’s elec­tion sys­tem would be forced into existence. 

As I leave Part 1 of the nar­ra­tive, the Geor­gia elec­tion sys­tem in place for 15 years, run by dis­in­ter­est­ed aca­d­e­mics at Ken­ne­saw State Uni­ver­si­ty, has been put on notice that their ser­vices would no longer be need­ed beyond June of 2018. In its place, hav­ing assem­bled the SAFE Com­mis­sion, Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp spun into motion the cre­ation of a new, in-house elec­tion sys­tem, this time, how­ev­er, run under the direct super­vi­sion of Georgia’s elect­ed Sec­re­tary of State, rather than a dis­in­ter­est­ed 3rd party.

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Soon, the smok­ing gun will be revealed… 

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