Georgia election boards certify Trump's win as Republicans object to law

ATLANTA — County election boards across Georgia are certifying the results of the presidential election before Tuesday’s deadline, but some Republican board members are expressing reservations even after Donald Trump’s victory and want state lawmakers to again take up the issue next year.

Certification — a step to make results official before losing candidates can request recounts or contest the outcome in court — is required by state law. And Georgia courts recently ruled county board members have a duty to certify elections.

Some Republican election board members have increasingly opposed certifying elections since Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, objecting to signing off on numbers because of their concerns about perceived discrepancies and access to documents. At least 19 county election board members refused to certify results over the past four years, according to a statewide survey by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

However, election boards in Gwinnett and Spalding counties — where Republican board members had previously opposed certification — voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the results. Election boards in all 159 Georgia counties have a 5 p.m. deadline to certify the election.

In Spalding County, a Republican-leaning area south of Atlanta, the election board certified the results before finishing a hand count that it had requested.

Roy McClain, the board member who had previously voted against certification, was absent, prompting accusations of hypocrisy from Yoshunda Jones, a Spalding resident who noted board members had previously given “passionate, Academy Award-winning speeches” about the importance of hand counts.

“All of a sudden, since I guess their candidate of choice won this particular time, they decided not to do that,” she said.

This year’s election wasn’t as close as in 2020, with Trump defeating Democrat Kamala Harris by about 117,000 votes in Georgia.

Four years ago, three vote counts showed Biden won by about 12,000 votes, and investigations have repeatedly discredited allegations of widespread fraud that could have changed the result. Investigations found some errors, such as over 3,000 double-scanned ballots in a recount in Fulton.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled last month that county election board members must finalize results as part of their jobs, and they’re not allowed to refuse to do so based on suspicions of miscounts of fraud.

In Gwinnett County, Republican appointee David Hancock made a motion to certify the results Tuesday. Hancock had previously voted against certifying the March presidential preference primary because he didn’t receive documents he wanted to review until after the deadline.

This time, Hancock supported certifying results he said were “pretty close” despite discrepancies across the county’s 156 precincts. He said he received the documents he requested but didn’t have time to review them all. He said the General Assembly should give local boards until the second Friday after the election to certify.

“It’s such a rushed process,” Hancock said. “Give us a little more time.”

Michael Heekin, a Republican appointee to the Fulton County election board, called on voters to ask the General Assembly to change the state’s certification law.

“I take issue with the fact that this is a purely ministerial duty,” said Heekin, who had proposed an election rule requiring an inquiry before certifying results. “We should be at least one of the lines of defense in examining the goodness and the accuracy of the election.”

But Aaron Johnson, a Democratic appointee to the board, said election boards do examine results and report potential problems — and then they have to certify the election.

“I agree. We should be a line of defense,” Johnson said. “However, that doesn’t give us the ability to supersede the law. There are things we have to do.”

The Fulton election board undertook an extensive precertification review of the election, including statements of votes cast, election night reports, memory card chain-of-custody reports, voter lists, ballot scanner tapes and absentee ballot documentation. The board spent Thursday, Friday and Tuesday reviewing documents.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, pledged to certify statewide results for this year’s election on Nov. 22, as he did four years ago when Biden won.

“I said from the beginning some people will be happy about the election results and some will be sad,” Raffensperger said. “But the fact is that we won the House, the Senate and the presidency. And every single Georgian can take to the bank that these election results reflect the will of Georgia’s voters.”