Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Texas, Georgia, Arizona: Three cases studies of state oversight of troubled local elections

 Similar to Texas, Georgia has experienced issues with elections in Fulton County, which led the State Election Board to appoint a performance review board to conduct an assessment of the county.

After conducting a 17-month-long review, the board released its report this January, noting how, despite having issues in the 2020 presidential election, Fulton County has made improvements in the elections since and should continue to do so in preparation for the 2024 presidential election.

"Replacing the board would not be helpful and would in fact hinder the ongoing improvements to Fulton County elections." Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has previously called for Fulton County's elections to be taken over by the state.

"With SB 202," the election integrity law passed in 2021, "Habitually failing counties can - actually the State Election Board can come in and replace the election director and really take over the governance of that," Raffensperger told the John Solomon Reports podcast in June 2021, noting Florida took similar action more than 10 years earlier and rectified problems in places like Palm Beach County.

Following the 2020 presidential election, the Arizona state Senate conducted an audit of the election in Maricopa County, which flagged a large number of voters who potentially voted in the county and at least one other county in the state.

While Arizona is currently run by a Democratic administration, following the 2020 election when Republicans still held the governor's and attorney general's offices, the state didn't take over administration of Maricopa County's elections.

Maricopa County, the largest county in the state, had election issues in 2022 while being run by Republican election officials.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/texas-georgia-arizona-how-three-states-pushed-election-oversight-counties

No comments: