Brad Raffensperger - Integrity Counts

Brad Raffensperger put public service above party service, and for that he is a true democracy action hero

The Hon. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California

Integrity Counts

Brad Raffensperger

Georgia Secretary of State

To our eldest son Brenton, who passed more than three years ago. Brenton loved politics, poetry, the great classical writers, and music, and most importantly, he loved me and I loved him.

Brenton encouraged my first steps into the political arena and brought perspectives that shed light on my blind spots.

We miss him and always will. I love you, Son.

With deep love,

Dad and Mom

June 2021

This book will lose me some friends. But if it lost me all and gained me none, in Gods name, as I am a free man, I would publish it.

Sam Houston

I dont expect history to long remember the name Brad Raffensperger. I do, however, believe future generations of Americans will remember these times when a president who lost an election refused to concede and instead went about challenging the integrity of Americas core democratic institutions. Calling into question state election procedures, he persuaded many of his supporterswith anger and indignation, but without real evidencethat he was the rightful winner. The political system and the courts alike rejected his claims, but many voters, fanned by the presidents rhetoric, were convinced that those institutions were part of the problem, that the new chief executive was illegitimate, and the election system had failed them.

As secretary of state for the state of Georgia, I stood at times as subject, object, and target in the unfolding drama. In these pages, I will share my experience and observations with the hope my words might help rebuild confidence in our elections.

One of the most troubling questions in the wake of the 2020 election is whether we will see every candidate who loses a major election refuse to accept the results, and instead set out to raise money and build support on unfounded claims of fraud and corruption. To avoid that prospect, we must come to terms with the scope of the problem, but doing so wont be comfortable for either party.

I say either party because the 2020 crisis was not unprecedented in Georgia. By November 2020, I had been challenging the claims of a stolen election for nearly two years. From my perspective, the most striking aspect of the Trump ordeal was not its novelty, but the unshakable sense of dj vu that dogged me throughout.

When President Donald Trump stood before a crowd near the White House on January 6, 2021, and proclaimed, We will never concede. You dont concede when theres theft involved, The similarities dont end there, and when considered with some care, they paint a troubling picture of an all-too-bipartisan willingness to undermine the integrity of our democracy, and the publics confidence in it, for the sake of personal, partisan, and financial gain.

A president of the United States has a unique responsibility to defend the Constitution, and President Trumps rallying of his supporters against the election results led to a violent attack against Congress and his own vice president at the Capitol. Abrams was not a sitting government official when she refused to concede her election, but as a major national figure, she had a distinct obligation to avoid slandering our electoral system. While her false charges (thankfully) did not lead to violence, they continue to be widely believed and repeated even now, particularly by people who claim to be concerned about the integrity of our democracy. The corrosive effects of such lies are spreading still.

These threats to public confidence from both sides of the political divide are at odds with the realities of American elections. The fact is this: Our elections are both fairer and more secure than they have been at any point in our history. Voter participation rates are high, and evidence of widespread fraud is exceedingly rare. And yet, thanks to irresponsible rhetoric from members of both parties, Americans are increasingly skeptical of their countrys ability to hold free and fair elections.

To point to the breadth of the problem, therefore, is not to draw equivalences or to minimize or exaggerate the misbehavior of one person or party. It is, rather, to clarify the scope of the challenge confronting all those who want to restore faith in our democracy.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan began his first inaugural address by noting the significance of the peaceful transfer of power in our country:

The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

That ceremony is the capstone of a complex, multilayered, decentralized process of running elections that are safe, accessible, reliable, and fair. Accomplishing it has never been a simple matter, but our country is actually quite good at it. The secrets to its success are fairness, trust, and integrity. Those three values are closely intertwined.

But we can no longer take that combination for granted, and we cannot treat the shortage of public confidence in our elections as the fault of one side or another alone. It is a problem that runs to the core of our civic culture. To address it, we all must acknowledge our role in causing it, and take on the hard work of building mutual trust by becoming more worthy of it.

HELLO, BRAD AND RYAN AND everybody. We appreciate the time and the call.

The voice on my cell phone speaker belonged to President Donald Trump. My wife, Tricia, and I sat at our kitchen counter with the phone in a metal stand so I could take notes as we listened.

My first thought when I heard the presidents voice was, What would my dad think of this? His son is talking to the president of the United States.

But this was no time for wandering thoughts. I knew why the president was calling, and I needed to focus. He got right to the point. So, weve spent a lot of time on this, he said, and if we could just go over some of the numbers, I think its pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia.

I was tempted to interrupt, to offer a correction, but then I heard my dads voice in my head.

Wait. Listen. Respect.

So I listened and waited for an invitation to respond.

It was Saturday afternoon, January 2, 2021, sixty days after the presidential election. Beginning long before the election and every day since, President Trump had attacked the foundation of our democracy and undermined Americans faith in our electoral institutions. He had tweeted insults and threats at me and at Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Now he was directly attacking the election itself. He was asking me, as Georgias secretary of state, to find 11,780 votesenough for him to claim a win in our state.

I could not do that, because the data didnt support it. In my analysis, this was a physical impossibility; there were not 11,780 votes to be found. Since assuming office in January 2019, my team and I focused our efforts to head off every possible avenue for election fraud. Proactively, in early 2020 right after COVID-19 hit, I created the Absentee Ballot Fraud Task Force because I fully expected more voters would want to vote from the safety of their homes rather than risk going out and voting in a public setting. I was chastised in the press by prominent Democrats for that decision. The task force members consisting of conservative Republicans, Democrats, and independents had strong election integrity and legal backgrounds to help ensure robust security measures were in place in Georgia.