Georgia lawmaker urges state takeover of Fulton County Elections after FBI ballot seizure

ATLANTA - A Republican state lawmaker is calling for the Georgia State Election Board to take over Fulton County’s elections following the unsealing of a federal search warrant affidavit.

'It's past time for the state to take over'

What Republicans are Saying:

Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, urged the state board to exercise its power under Georgia’s 2021 Election Integrity Act to seize control of the local board. The move comes one day after the unsealing of an affidavit that authorized the FBI to seize hundreds of boxes of ballots and other 2020 election documents from the Fulton County Election Hub last month.

"It's past time for the state to take over for county elections," Dolezal said. "They are incapable, unwilling, or for some reason refuse to clean up their voter rolls. And we have dirty voter rolls. You can have dirty elections."

The calls for a takeover have highlighted a sharp partisan divide at the State Capitol. State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs, one of three supporters of President Donald Trump on the Republican-led board, indicated she is open to the idea.

"It’s been a long time coming I think," Grubbs said. "A lot of questions need to be answered."

"When you have dirty voter rolls, you have dirty elections," Dolezal said.

The FBI last month raided Fulton County election offices. Agents confiscated hundreds of boxes of 2020 ballots and other election material that included voter data. For years, President Donald Trump has claimed fraud in Fulton County cost him the election in Georgia despite recounts, audits and court cases showing no evidence of widespread fraud.

"The election in 2020 in Fulton County was a mess," Dolezal said. "If we find that counties are not maintaining their voter rolls as required by state law, it should be an automatic trigger for the state to take over elections."

Dolezal says state lawmakers in his party are looking at proposals to seize the elections from Fulton County. "There have been bills that have been bounced back and forth in terms of what we do," he said.

‘There are no smoking guns’

What Democrats are Saying:

Democratic lawmakers, however, characterized the investigation and the resulting affidavit as a coordinated effort by "election deniers" to repeat debunked claims about the 2020 election.

"There are no smoking guns," said Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta. "The five central allegations in this affidavit have been investigated ad nauseum. It is apparent that the same network election deniers who tried to overturn Trump's 2020 loss appear to have coordinated Trump's DOJ and the FBI on their seizure of Fulton County ballots."

Rep. Tanya Miller, D-Atlanta, argued the push for a takeover is less about election integrity and more about political control.

"This is about taking control over state elections by the federal government, simply because a person cannot accept that they lost," Miller said.

‘Fulton County will fight'

What they're saying:

Fulton County officials have promised to challenge any state effort to take control of their operations.

"Fulton County will fight," Fulton County Chair Robb Pitts said on Tuesday following the release of the 20-page federal affidavit and warrants used to search the county's election hub. "We'll fight this with every resource that's at our disposal, and we will not stop fighting."

The Democratic leader says calls to take over the county’s elections are "pure nonsense, pure political theater."

Pitts insists Fulton County elections were free and fair in 2020 and still are with no evidence of widespread fraud. "That allegation, that claim, that nonsense has been debunked. It’s been reviewed. It’s been looked at A-to-A. Even a hand-count of the 2020 elections, in every instance, we come up clean," Pitts said.

All this comes after the president has said he wants to "take over elections" from democratic-run areas.

When asked if he worries about the president seeking to interfere in the midterm elections, and beyond, Pitts responded, "Absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt. This is about 2026 and more importantly about 2028."

"What they would try to do, I would think, would be to manipulate the outcome of the election," Pitts said. "We have a very capable county attorney, and we’ve employed two of the outstanding legal minds in the country to assist us nationally. We’re prepared to use the letter of the law everything available to us to fight this."

What is the 2021 Election Integrity Act?

Dig deeper:

Under the 2021 law, the State Election Board has the authority to replace local election boards that are deemed underperforming. If the board moves forward, it would represent an unprecedented state intervention into the management of Georgia's largest county.

The 2021 Election Integrity Act (SB 202) was passed following the 2020 election. Republican lawmakers used the law to trigger a performance review of Fulton County the following year. This was the first major test of whether the state would actually seize control of local election management.

The state board eventually voted unanimously to end the performance review without a takeover, citing "significant improvements" made by Fulton County.