When Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, had to pay more than half a million dollars from his own pocket to defend himself in a frivolous lawsuit about the 2020 election, he and his allies had a sudden fear.
What if this happened to a local official? What if that threat of financial ruin could force an election worker to buckle to subversive demands?
With his support, allies of Mr. Raffensperger have created the Election Defense Fund, a nonprofit that is designed to support election officials against pressure to delay or disrupt election procedures, including certification. They plan to offer messaging to combat disinformation and provide legal counsel for local officials facing baseless lawsuits or other threats. They will also support lawsuits and other actions against local officials who attempt to subvert the results of the election.
“The impetus for us starting this was Brad getting sued and having to defend it in his personal capacity, and realizing if this happens, this would be debilitating to election officials,” said Ryan Germany, the former general counsel to Mr. Raffensperger and one of the leaders of the Election Defense Fund. “Even frivolous lawsuits can be debilitating just from the cost. And if the cost is a problem, imagine what that does to the stress level they’re already feeling.”
The new fund was established amid heightened scrutiny of elections in Georgia, where former President Donald J. Trump is still facing charges of interference related to the 2020 vote. The State Election Board recently spent weeks approving new rules governing elections, only to have a judge issue a sweeping rebuke, rejecting the measures as “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”
Most of the rules knocked down by the court closely aligned with the priorities of right-wing activists, including a requirement to count election ballots by hand.
In describing the new Election Defense Fund in a fund-raising email, Mr. Raffensperger was blunt about the goal of “protecting this year’s election results and standing up against those who attempt to delay certification.” The group, he continued, “will identify local election officials who are most likely not to certify or otherwise attempt to interfere with results,” and “support lawsuits that seek to force election officials to uphold their legal duties, and defend election officials who are harassed, targeted or sued for doing their lawful duties.”
The Election Defense Fund has already raised nearly $2 million, and Mr. Raffensperger has sent out emails to potential donors asking them to support the effort to build up a $5 million war chest before Election Day.
“No election officials should have to face frivolous lawsuits and harassment all by themselves simply for following the law and protecting your vote,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement. “If providing this important public service becomes a personal liability, we won’t have election workers.”
Local election officials across the country are facing an inundation of threats and pressure from politicians to bend the rules of democracy to their whim. Just this week, a man in Tampa, Fla., was arrested for threatening an election official. In Texas, a man who refused to remove his MAGA hat assaulted a poll worker. Bulletproof glass and protective boundaries are regular furniture now at election offices.
But the potential for election officials to face personal legal action is a new kind of threat.
In Jackson County, Ga., a member of the county election board sought to arrest the county election director because she was upset at how the meeting minutes were kept.
“I’m going to ask the board, do we pass a resolution tonight to instruct the district attorney to draw up an indictment against the director, or do we simply offer our director an opportunity to leave her position,” Christina Loop, the Republican-appointed board member, said at a September meeting, according to a report in Main Street News, a local publication. (Ms. Loop apologized a month later.)
Of course, a county election board has no power to force a district attorney to take any action, let alone issue an indictment, but the threat represented a new front for election officials to navigate.
These officials have also been inundated with requests for reams of data and materials, often from far-right activists, creating time-consuming distractions that both add fuel to the disinformation space and could disrupt the normal flow of elections.
In the May primary in Georgia, Julie Adams, a member of the Fulton County board of elections who is also closely aligned with a network of far-right election activists, began requesting an enormous amount of data from election officials in the state, stating that she needed the data before she could certify the results.
When election officials in the county said her requests were both too broad and too voluminous while officials were still carrying out the election, Ms. Adams sued the county board and the election director, Nadine Williams.
A judge recently ruled that Ms. Adams, and all officials in Georgia, must certify by the deadline and cannot use these data requests as grounds for refusing certification.
But that ruling is unlikely to be the end of such requests in Georgia.
Ms. Adams appealed the decision last week.
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