In a May 2024 action reminiscent of the battle between “David and Goliath,” Cherokee County Georgia voter Tim Adderholdt asked the Magistrate Court in his county to issue a warrant for the arrest of one Bradford Jay Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State. He has accused Raffensperger of three criminal offenses: “Violation of Oath by a Public Officer”, “False Statements and Writings”, and “Criminal Solicitation.”
Adderholdt’s claims stem from a May 2020 rule change unanimously adopted by the State Election Board in response to the Covid pandemic. It allowed counties to open and scan absentee ballots up to three weeks before the June 9, 2020 combined Presidential Preference and State Primary, the State Primary Runoff, the November 2, 2020 General Election, and the January 5, 2021 US Senate Runoff.
Due to the pandemic, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp had declared a “Public Heath State of Emergency” on March 14, 2020, and called “for a special session of the General Assembly to convene at the State Capitol at 8 AM on Monday, March 16, 2020, to ratify this action through a joint resolution,” which the legislature approved.
Then in a move that remains controversial, Raffensperger announced on March 24, 2020 that he would be “mailing absentee ballot request forms to every Georgia voter,” putting the number at 6.9 million. Adderholdt characterized that as a “short sighted decision that created a staffing issue, and the SOS’s solution to their self-created staffing issue was to violate the law.”
During the May 18, 2020 State Election Board meeting, arguing in favor of the proposed rule change, Raffensperger’s General Counsel Ryan Germany told the Board:
“To give you some statistics, as of this morning, we have had 1,438,000 absentee ballot applications accepted. Out of that 1.4 million, 1.319 million of those absentee ballots have been mailed. The rest are, of course, in the process of being mailed. And out of those 1.3 that have been mailed, 1.25 million have already been delivered to Georgia voters. 360,173 ballots have already been accepted – been returned and accepted by county election officials. I think the last presidential preference primary, general primary, there was 36,000 total absentee vote by mail ballots cast in the entire election. So we’re already at well above that in orders of magnitude.”
By Mark Davis
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