Decision on Georgia election board threatens Trump’s apparent truce with Gov. Kemp

FORSYTH, Ga. - Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has enjoyed an unusually friendly public rapport in recent days with former president Donald Trump.

After years of heaping insults on Kemp, a Republican, for refusing to help reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, Trump praised the governor on Truth Social this month for his “help and support.” On Thursday, Kemp plans to attend a fundraiser in Atlanta for the Republican presidential nominee, who is locked in a virtual tie with Vice President Kamala Harris in polling of the critical swing state.

But the détente might not last. Kemp is now weighing whether state law requires him to get involved in a simmering controversy around the Georgia State Election Board, whose conservative majority is under fire for approving new rules this month that Trump supports but that state and local officials say will sow confusion, compromise ballot security and potentially enable rogue county boards to block certification of election results in November.

This week, Kemp asked Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) for an advisory opinion on what authority he has to address ethics complaints against the state board. Those who filed the complaints have said that state law requires the governor to remove the members if he finds their actions were inappropriate.

The board’s pro-Trump majority has attracted attention in recent weeks for taking up new rules, including one that allows county election boards to make “reasonable inquiries” before certifying an election if they have questions about the outcome. The rule does not specify what a reasonable inquiry is, and it places no limits on the time frame of such a probe or what documents a board can demand before certifying results. Election experts say delays could open the door to efforts to subvert the outcome along the lines of what Trump and his allies attempted in 2020.

Even more concerning to state and local election officials is a rule the board plans to take up on Sept. 20 that would require all counties to conduct hand counts of ballots at the precinct level on election night. If approved, these officials say, the measure could lead to less accurate results and compromise ballot security by requiring more people to handle them.

“We have had so much security training. We have done so many tabletop exercises. We have been told that the number one priority is security,” said Christina Redden, the assistant election director in Glynn County, who along with hundreds of other election officials was gathered this week at an election-security training in Forsyth, about an hour south of Atlanta. “Ballots are going to be vulnerable while being handled by multiple people at the precinct level.”

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who also attended the training, called the state board “a mess.” “Legal precedent is pretty clear. You shouldn’t change rules in the middle of an election,” he added, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

State and national Democrats sued this week in state court over the certification rule, arguing that it is intended to allow delays despite statutory language requiring certification to happen within six days of an election.

“Allegations of fraud or election misconduct are then resolved by the courts in properly filed challenges, not by county boards in the counting process,” the suit states.

The State Election Board carries a wide range of responsibilities, including investigating the administration of elections and recommending sanctions or even prosecution for mismanagement or fraud. It also makes recommendations for new laws and writes rules to promote uniformity and integrity in state elections. It is a bipartisan board, with its five members appointed by the governor, the state House, the state Senate and each of the two major parties. Its role has typically been far less prominent than that of the secretary of state or others involved in administering Georgia’s vote.

The ethics complaints center on the rules but also include an allegation that the three conservative members held an illegal meeting last month, at which they deliberated over the certification rule, without posting proper public notice. One of the pro-Trump board members, Janelle King, denied that the meeting was illegal in an interview, explaining that they posted notice of the meeting on the door inside the state Capitol where they met.

“We gave 24 hours of notice. We had a majority of the board present,” King said.

Complicating Kemp’s involvement in the controversy is the fact that Trump has been cheering on the state board’s work, naming each of the three conservatives at his Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta and calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.” He criticized Kemp for not supporting the board’s work, suggesting without evidence that the governor might be opposed to Republicans winning. Kemp has not said anything publicly in support of or in opposition to the state board’s actions.

The remarks prompted renewed fears that if Trump loses Georgia, as he did in 2020, he will again mount a pressure campaign on the officials responsible for fairly and impartially overseeing elections. Trump faces criminal charges both in federal court and in Georgia’s Fulton County related to his efforts to overturn his loss.

One state Republican with knowledge of Kemp’s thinking said he hopes to keep relations amicable with Trump and is not trying to pick a fight with him. The person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid thoughts, said the governor is simply seeking clarity about state law by asking Carr to weigh in.

“Just as he has in the past, Governor Kemp will always uphold the laws and constitution of our state,” said Kemp spokesman Cody Hall.

A spokeswoman for Carr confirmed that Kemp sought an opinion but offered no further comment. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The public warming between Trump and Kemp has come after several weeks of acrimony between the two men.

Trump’s allies were shocked as they watched from backstage at the Aug. 3 rally as Trump, in addition to praising the State Election Board members, repeatedly criticized Kemp.

Trump called him “a bad guy,” “disloyal” and “a very average governor.” None of the jabs were in the teleprompter or prepared speech, and staff members learned later that he had been given information about Kemp that angered him just before the event, including a report of Kemp’s opposition to what the election board was doing, according to two advisers to the former president.

Kemp had not been invited to the rally, and his team was taken aback by the criticism. The governor was particularly upset by Trump’s criticism of his wife, Marty, a person with knowledge of Kemp’s thinking said. In April, Marty Kemp had told a local TV station that if the election were held then, she would write in her husband’s name for president.

Kemp responded to Trump on X, telling the former president to “leave my family out of it” and calling on him to stop “engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.” In addition, some of Kemp’s allies in the state backed out of plans to praise Trump publicly after the event, and Trump campaign aides began receiving a flood of concerned calls.

Polls show Kemp is immensely popular in Georgia. Trump unsuccessfully backed a primary challenger to Kemp in 2022, but the governor won handily and went on to win the general election by more than seven percentage points. Trump allies have been hoping the governor will deploy his formidable ground operation for the former president this year.

The governor already had plans to spend around $2 million from his campaign account on get-out-the-vote efforts, including paid door-knocks and text and mail operations. But the effort is designed to focus on six competitive state House districts in the Atlanta metro region that went for Biden in 2020, according to a person with knowledge of Kemp’s political operation. It’s unclear how much that investment will benefit Trump or whether Kemp’s plans will expand.

In a measure of Georgia’s importance to the presidential vote, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are touring the state this week.

Trump and Kemp have not talked directly since the days following the 2020 election, despite the joint fundraiser on Thursday.

Trump friend and donor Steve Witkoff and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) brokered the détente, according to two Trump advisers. Both men met with the governor and teed up an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News with the hope that Trump would see it. The goal was for Trump to stop insulting Kemp for the rest of the election, campaign advisers said, and let Kemp help the Republican ticket win Georgia.

During the Fox News interview last week, Kemp spoke about the urgent need to help Trump beat Harris, who was about to take the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “We gotta win from the top of the ticket on down,” Kemp said. Less than an hour later, Trump’s praising social media post landed.

Trump has said that Kemp made the first move toward peace with that interview, but what Kemp told Hannity was not actually new.

“I’ve been saying that literally for over a year now that I was going to support our nominee,” Kemp said during a Thursday morning appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “It’s not about him. It’s about our country.”

When asked whether he will make any public appearances with Trump, he said, “We’ll see how that plays out.”

For now, the governor’s aides say they are grateful for a pause in the hostilities that began after the 2020 election, as are Trump allies.

“The president has some personal disagreements with Brian Kemp, and Brian Kemp has some personal disagreements with the president,” Trump running mate JD Vance said at a rally in Erie, Pa, on Wednesday. “But they are both big enough to put the country over personal interests.”

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Dawsey reported from Washington. Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.