Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has shot down a GOP effort to reopen an investigation into repeatedly discredited claims that victory was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump in 2020.
The Georgia State Election Board, now controlled by Trump loyalists who support election fraud conspiracy theories, earlier this month attempted to order Carr to resume a previously closed investigation into Trump’s 2020 loss in Fulton County.
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In an official decision issued on Monday, Carr wrote that his office “is not required to conduct an investigation on its own or with outside personnel at the direction of a client” while ruling that the board “is not empowered to direct the Attorney General to conduct an investigation.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Georgia State Election Board via online contact form on Monday.
Pro-Trump election conspiracy theories have received Republican pushback in Georgia before. In a January 2021 phone call, Trump unsuccessfully demanded that Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” him enough votes to overturn the 2020 outcome in Georgia, which he lost by fewer than 12,000 votes.
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Days later, an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an ill-fated attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. The former president was indicted last year on now-pending felony election subversion charges in Georgia and at the federal level.
While Carr on Monday shot down the request for a continued investigation of the 2020 election outcome, the board adopted a new rule on the same day that could severely impact the certification of this year’s election.
In a 3-2 decision, with the board’s pro-Trump majority voting in favor, a rule was adopted that will allow local election officials to investigate any minor or major discrepancies between the number of votes cast and the number of voters before certifying results.
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Minor discrepancies are common and do not necessarily indicate that fraud took place. However, the new rule allows officials to investigate discrepancies without any apparent limits or deadlines, potentially delaying certification beyond the point required to make results official in the Electoral College.
“Proponents of this rule and ones like it claim they help ensure accurate elections, but instead they just complicate the process and plainly exceed the bounds of elections procedures,” Caitlin May, a voting rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, said in a statement.
“The role of a county elections superintendent is clear and limited: to certify election results, not to muddy the process with fictitious concerns of imagined fraud,” she added. “The duty and scope of authority to certify is set by the legislature alone, and anything beyond this administrative requirement is an unlawful overreach.”
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Earlier this month, the board’s pro-Trump majority passed another rule that allows local officials to initiate a “reasonable inquiry” when they feel discrepancies are present. The term “reasonable inquiry” was not defined, nor were any limits placed on the extent or length of any inquiry.
“These latest changes could delay certification of elections,” Charles S. Bullock, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia, previously told Newsweek.
However, Bullock argued that the potential of “delay for the sake of delay is limited” due to inevitable legal challenges that would occur if such delays took place, saying that Republicans would be mistaken to “think that by causing delays, they could push the process beyond the deadline for appointing presidential electors.”
