Election officials on threats to your right to vote

With just a month left before election day, Sabrina German sees herself as an indispensable worker for democracy. Chatham County, Georgia’s voter registration director, German, is in the spotlight as she works to comply with regulations far-reaching changes to state election rules in this critical battlefield condition.

“The first three words of the preamble read: ‘We the People,’ meaning that we, as public servants, work for the people to ensure that they have a fair election and a voice for the candidates they seek. “We decide,” said German.

Reform in Georgia has many fronts, from the Republican majority on the state’s election board to the Georgia Legislature, which has allowed individuals to file a flood of challenges to voter rolls.

German said she has a thousand voter registration challenges in just one county.

Attorney Colin McRae, chairman of the nonpartisan County Registration Board (where he has served for two decades), said: “It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out the agenda behind some of the challenges,” he said. “A number of names submitted to us recently included hundreds of college students. And it didn’t take much research to find out that the college students whose registrations were challenged all attended Savannah State University.” [a] historically black university.”

Although these issues may seem local, they have national political significance. and former President Trump commented on the election campaign, praising Republicans on Georgia’s election board. “They’re burning,” he said. “They are doing a great job. Three members. Three people, all pit bulls, fighting for honesty, transparency and victory. They fight.”

“Sunday Morning” reached out to members of the Georgia Board of Elections who were praised by Trump. They have long defended their work, and one member told us the controversy over their efforts was “fake to suit a different agenda.”

What is happening in Georgia is just one example of how voting challenges are rocking the country. And the question remains: Are recent changes to state election laws relevant? real Problems? Or is it just politics?

David Becker, a CBS News contributor and director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C., said: “I’ve been watching and researching the quality of our voter rolls for about 25 years, and there is no doubt that our voter rolls are im At the moment we are more precise than ever before.”

So what fuels suspicion about voter lists? “We see that many of their claims about the election depend solely on the results,” Becker said. “It’s not about the actual process.

“The voter lists are public. They could have challenged these things in 2023, 2021, or 2019. They wait until shortly before the election, which shows that they actually have no interest in cleaning up the lists. What they are.” “I’m really trying to set the stage for claims that an election was stolen after its candidate presumably lost.”

The 2020 election still casts a long shadow. State officials like Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, are preparing for another contentious election.

On January 2, 2021, Raffensperger received an infamous phone call from then-President Trump asked if he would “find” votes so Trump could win. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more we have because we won the state,” Trump said in a recorded conversation.

Raffensperger resisted the pressure not Certify the 2020 election in Georgia. Asked if he would resist the pressure again, he said: “I will do my job. I will abide by the law and the constitution.”

Raffensperger will once again oversee and certify Georgia’s elections. Asked whether he thought any of the elections board’s proposed changes were necessary, Raffensperger replied: “No, not one.”

Raffensperger says voting is safe and secure in Georgia. Asked why election board members keep making changes to the rules, he said: “I think a lot of them are living in the past and can’t accept what happened in 2020.”

Carol Anderson, an author and voting rights activist who teaches at Emory University, said: “One of the things about voter suppression is that it always seems harmless and always seems reasonable, except that it isn’t. What’s happening in Georgia with voting rights is this. “There’s a massive demographic shift taking place. They have a significant Latino population.

“So it’s a power conflict between the vision of a new Georgia and … the vision of the old Georgia, our old ways,” she said.

Sabrina German of Chatham County said she thinks about leaving every day because of the pressure on poll workers. The German may be tired, but she and Colin McRae say their experience in 2020 has prepared them for whatever comes next.

McRae said he took it personally when Donald Trump asked the secretary of state to “find” 11,000 votes to put him over Joe Biden. “Of course we took it personally; Any criticism of the system is a criticism of the people who make up that system,” McRae said. “The truth will come out again. The truth will prevail.”

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The story was produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Carol Ross.