Raffensperger a no-show before state Senate Ethics Committee

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones called on Raffensperger to testify about what Jones claimed were hundreds of thousands of votes improperly certified in the 2020 election and other “failures in protecting the integrity of Georgia’s elections.” Jones’ allies on the committee were expected to press the secretary of state on the matter.

“The Secretary of State must answer for this latest breakdown, and his silence is unacceptable,” Jones said in a statement.

Raffensperger and Jones are both running for governor and will face off in the Republican primary in May. Trump has endorsed Jones for governor of the state.

The Senate committee on Thursday passed a resolution urging Raffensperger to hand over unredacted state voter data to the Justice Department. The Trump administration is suing the state over the records.

State Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, sponsored the resolution and slammed Raffensperger for skipping the meeting.

“He continuously fails to show up and answer the questions,” he said.

State Sen. Marty Harbin, R-Tyrone, expressed his frustration that Raffensperger didn’t even send a representative to the committee meeting.

“We need to play that on a commercial for the people running against him for governor,” he said.

Democrats on the committee who opposed the measure raised concerns about what would happen with voters’ data.

“I’m deeply concerned about the privacy data not being stored properly,” said Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain.

Georgia voter rolls

Leading up to the hearing, Raffensperger and Jones wrote opposing editorials on how to handle the Trump administration’s demand for sensitive voter data, which includes voters’ birth dates, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

Jones wrote in The Federalist that “Raffensperger has chosen deflection and denial,” rather than work with the Trump administration to clean the state’s voter rolls.

The secretary of state wrote an op-ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he called sharing sensitive voter information with the Justice Department and unnamed third parties “reckless” and illegal.

The squabble over the Trump administration’s demands is the latest rift among Republicans over how the state handles elections. Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed for years that widespread voter fraud cost him Georgia in 2020.

Jones, a close Trump ally, wrote in his editorial that his criticism of Raffensperger is about accountability, not “relitigating 2020.”

Raffensperger was famously on the receiving end of a phone call in which Trump asked him to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia results of the 2020 election. Raffensperger refused.

But the pressure to hand over the voter information isn’t just coming from Republican lawmakers. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled State Election Board, which often finds itself at odds with Raffensperger, also approved a resolution calling on him to submit that data.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN/AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN/AJC

Late last year, the department sued Raffensperger for unredacted data. The secretary of state’s office has told the Justice Department it handed over all of the information it could under state law.

The Trump administration has sued more than 20 states, mostly targeting those led by Democrats and swing states like Georgia.

Last week, a federal judge tentatively granted Oregon’s motion to dismiss the case for the state’s unredacted voter data. The judge said at a court hearing that a written ruling would come later. Another federal judge dismissed a similar case in California.

Attorneys representing Raffensperger on Wednesday asked a federal judge in Macon to dismiss the case against Georgia.