It’s the second day of a new year just after a presidential election and you pick up the phone. At one point, the guy on the other end of the line says, “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state.”
The guy on that Jan. 2, 2021, call was the president of the United States, Donald Trump. He was putting pressure on Georgia’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to prevail in the Peach State over Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Trump even threatened a criminal prosecution.
The whole mess put Raffensperger in a very uncomfortable spot because he wanted to do his job — reporting votes accurately and reporting the numbers for what they were, without deceit, subterfuge or obfuscation.
“I’m an engineer. I’m real good with math,” Raffensperger said earlier this week in an interview outside of Atlanta. “So with elections, there’s no integrals, no double integrals, no Laplace transform of a Fourier wave series. It’s just adding up numbers. We don’t even have to subtract, divide or multiply — so that’s grade school (math). But we have a process in place and we know that our elections are safe, they’re secure and they’re accurate.”
Still, the pressure from the Trump White House — attempted coercion that ended up getting Trump in trouble with Georgia prosecutors and was part of an article of impeachment in the U.S. House — was intense.
“It was an interesting moment, somewhat surreal,” Raffensperger reflected. “We never expected this to happen. But I think sometimes you know things happen for a reason, but you are called to do your job — no matter what. And that’s what I wanted to do. And I also wanted to make sure that I was respectful to the office of the President of the United States of America.
“Because I think really what we see right now … throughout the world is people should be respectful of people who hold positions of authority.”
And he said he believes that’s what is at stake these days in America. Americans may be risking the ability to compromise and talk respectfully about issues on which they don’t agree.
“People should talk to each other respectfully,” he said. “I think when we lose that, I think we’re losing something within ourselves.
“We can have strong conversations and just say, by George, I disagree with you on that, but we don’t have to pull out our swords. We don’t have to pull out our muskets. We don’t have to have duels. We can settle that. We are in America. We are in a representative republic.”
Since the 2020 election, Georgia election officials have worked to improve the voting process and smooth a few past snafus.
Raffensperger said he expects results comparatively quickly this year because Georgians seem to like early voting. While about 5% of ballots are expected to be mailed absentee ballots, more than 2 million Georgians have already cast early ballots. By election day, some 70% of the electorate is expected to have voted, which will take a lot of last-minute pressure off voting precincts. The fate of the state’s electoral votes — unless the election is within 1,000 votes or so — may be known by midnight, he said.
In South Carolina, the story on early voting is similar. It’s expected to speed reporting of results. Election officials in the Palmetto State say up to two-thirds of voters could head to the polls early.
As you listen to returns on election night, think about all of the Brad Raffenspergers out there who operate with integrity and know that voting in America is solid because it is done with a proven process, not with reckless abandon.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@charlestoncitypaper.com.
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