Ep. 5: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

The Ballot Box Briefing is a weekly segment on Sirius XM’s The Briefing, that examines the issues and storylines at the heart of running an efficient and accurate election. Guests include election administrators, local, state, and federal officials, cybersecurity experts, legal analysts, and members of BPC’s Democracy Program. 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger discusses election security in his state, the growing impact of AI in political campaigns, and the infamous phone call from President Trump after the 2020 election.

Edited Transcript

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

STEVE SCULLY (SS): Let’s talk about the lessons from 2020. There are a lot of questions swirling around election security. How do we reassure the public that the elections are safe, fair, and accurate?

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (BR): We just finished up a health security check for all 159 counties in Georgia last week. We did testing of the machines to make sure that they hadn’t been tampered with and that they’re accurately recording all the votes. Then, once we get into the election cycle, we’re going to start doing logic and accuracy testing before the machines are put into service at the local precincts. And then, during the early voting process, we do parallel monitoring to make sure nothing has happened to the equipment again. Then, we’ll do post audits. Also, we’re going to have a strong push to make sure voters take a look at their ballot and make sure everything is right before they drop it into the ballot box.

SS: Our generation grew up with election night. Now it is election week and beyond. So how do you prepare for something like that?

BR: We have 17 days of early voting, which is actually a good thing for us because it takes the pressure off of Election Day. Right now, Georgia is probably back to our historical voting preferences, which is about 5-6% voting no excuse absentee, about 60-65% voting early, and about 30% voting on Election Day. So, most people are actually coming to a polling location to vote, either early or on Election Day. But no matter how you vote in Georgia now, it’s all based on photo ID. I think that has elevated people’s confidence in the process, once they know everyone has been identified with photo ID.

SS: Let me follow up on the issue of confidence. If I am a Georgia resident and I go to the polling booth either day of or early voting, and you need to go back and verify the votes – what is the process?

BR: We’re going to do audits of races. Back in 2020, we had to audit one statewide race, and I selected the presidential race. That was a 100% hand re-tally because it was so close. Also, after the election is going to be certified, a candidate that’s within half a percent can ask for a recount, and since that is what happened we actually counted those ballots again. It proved that the count was accurate and that the machines did not flip the votes.

Coming up to this year, we’ve added additional audits. Post-election audits will start before pre-certification, and that means that before we certify those results, we’re going to do audits. We can pick a county commission race, state rep race, state senator race, congressional race – we can audit any race we want to. This year there will also be a presidential race and we can do a 100% hand recount if it’s close like it was in 2020.

SS: As we look at some of the exit polls from early primary and caucus states, a vast majority of Republicans did not trust the results of 2020. Again, there has been no evidence of any illegalities happening in 2020, but how do we change the perception of that?

BR: I continue to go out there and talk to folks and I continue to give them data. I think that really helps because many people don’t know what happened in 2020. Simply put, what really happened is two things: we had over 33,000 Republican voters who voted in the June 2020 primary who did not come out to vote at all in November 2020. That’s on the campaigns. Both campaigns know who came out to vote in their primaries, and all you can do is track those voters and say, ‘are you voting absentee? Are you voting early? Are you voting on Election Day?’ But no one ever did that. And so those 33,500 never came back out, and President Trump lost by less than 12,000 votes. That’s really a key point.

Also, there were 27,900 voters that skipped the top of the ticket but voted down ballot. Republican congressmen got 27,550 more votes than President Trump. So, it’s really important that the campaigns tell people to vote the entire ticket and to vote in the May primary and the fall general election. That’s up to the political parties. Our job as Secretary of State and county election offices is to make sure we run a fair, honest, and accurate election.

SS: Your conversation with then-President Trump generated international headlines. Take us back to that moment and set the stage. Did you know the President was going to call you? What was your reaction?

BR: I’d gotten a couple hour’s notice. I had gone on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox News and I shared those data points and also how Senator (David) Perdue did better in metro Atlanta than President Trump. I gathered that President Trump didn’t like hearing that, so he wanted to have a conversation and that was set up. I was at home and called into the White House switchboard around 3 o’clock that day and we had a one-hour conversation.

SS: What was going through your mind?

BR: From my perspective, we had had a month after the election to gather all these data points. They had sued us over 10,315 dead people. We had done all of our due diligence and found two dead people at the time. Since then, we found two more, so that’s just four dead people. He said that there were 66,000 underage voters; we had found none. He said there were 2,400 non-registered voters and over 2,000 felons; there were less than 74.

I wanted to give him the facts because I didn’t know if he had heard that. I didn’t know that it would change his mind, but I wanted to make sure he understood what happened in Georgia.

SS: Let’s talk about 2024, because there are some real challenges that you and other election officials across the country are facing. One of them is artificial intelligence, which we saw play out in New Hampshire, where a robocall took the voice of President Joe Biden and morphed it into having him say something that was completely untrue. As somebody who is on the front lines of election security, what are your concerns?

BR: It’ll be so good that you don’t know it’s fake – that’s the biggest concern. Right now they’ve been able to cipher out what is fake so you can dispel that very quickly. But in this day of social media, something can suddenly get out there and spin people up and develop a life of its own, and you can’t stop it.

SS: And with all of the attention on 2020, there is a real concern among local election officials that they won’t have the paid staff and the volunteers to do what you need to do.

BR: As I’m traveling throughout our entire state, I am just very grateful for the support our county commissioners are giving our local election offices. They finally understand that we need to really fund our offices. In our rural counties, we’re seeing the county leaders make investments in updated offices and better facilities for the county election officials to work in.

We’re also encouraging election directors to push for people to volunteer to be poll workers. I’m talking to the Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions Clubs – whatever the local service clubs are in these counties and communities – about volunteering to be a poll worker. I always ask: “who in this meeting is a poll worker? Can I get a show of hands?” When they do that, I say thank you very much, and I start clapping and so does everyone else for those people that volunteer. Because that’s a long day – 16 hours at least – it’s great public service and a great way to give back.

Also, if you happen to deny what happened in the election and you have a lot of questions about it, you can be a poll watcher for your local political party. You will go through the poll worker training and you will understand all the failsafes, checks, and double checks we have to make sure that it’s an accurate and fair election. It’ll just make you better educated. When you go down to the grocery store or the ball field, you can help explain to your friends “no, this is really how it works.” I think it helps reinforce that in Georgia, we’re having fair, honest, and accurate elections.

SS: I think it is safe to say that Brad Raffensberger is the most famous secretary of state in the country. Let’s spend a moment talking about you, your story, and how you ended up in this position.

BR: I ran for city council about ten years ago in John’s Creek. As a business owner – I ran a construction business – I wondered what I could do to give back to the community. I ran for city council because we met twice per month and I could do that and still run my business.

Then, we had an opening for the state House and I ran for that. We have session for 40 days, which takes about three months. I could do that because I get off maybe at 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, something like that, and then run to the office and work a few hours there. Then, my middle son started to take on more responsibility, so I had more margin to be able to get away from the office.

Then, there was an opportunity to run for Secretary of State. I made my son the president the construction business. When I took office, I ran on a few very simple points. Number one: we need to get a verifiable paper ballot system. We accomplished that. We actually had about two weeks of early voting for the presidential primary in 2020 with the new machines, and then we had COVID.

I also said we need to be able to join a multi-state system where we can share voter registration data confidentially to make sure that we have clean, accurate voter rolls. We continue to look at how we can improve that process. Then, we also looked at corporations, professional licenses, and securities and charities – how do we improve those processes? We had a lot on our plate, and then obviously we had COVID, which put a few more wrinkles on that thing.

SS: And yet, four years later, you’re still on the job. You still enjoy it?

BR: Yes, absolutely. It’s great country. I got some great folks I work for. Couldn’t ask for better people than Georgians. I think most people are good and Georgian are wonderful.

SS: You’re here in Washington with other secretaries of state from around the country at the National Association of Secretaries of State meeting. What do you talk about? How do you learn best practices from one state to another?

BR: I think we look at what other people are doing: how are they doing their list maintenance; where are they on photo ID and that process; how many days of early voting do they have? We think we hit the sweet spot with 17 days. The other thing that we’ll probably be spending a lot of time on is cybersecurity, AI, and deep fakes.