On Monday, in a dramatic escalation of his administration’s attempt to interfere in the midterm elections, President Trump called on Republicans to “take over the voting in at least 15 places.” But what did that mean exactly?
To hear the president tell it, he wants the GOP to “nationalize the voting,” something that will be difficult to pull off since states have control over election administration under the Constitution.
But there is one place he could succeed: Fulton County, Georgia, where the FBI just seized more than 650 boxes of ballots and voting records from the 2020 election in an unprecedented raid on January 28.
That’s because, in the aftermath of the president’s lies about the 2020 election, Georgia Republicans passed a sweeping rewrite of the state’s voting laws that gave the state election board (which now has a Trump-aligned MAGA majority) the extraordinary power to take over county election boards. That means someone appointed by the election-denier majority on the state board, which oversees voting rules and election certification, could take control of election operations in the state’s largest county. This Democratic stronghold contains most of metro Atlanta. They could then make it harder to vote and challenge election outcomes.
That would have huge ripple effects for the midterms in a top battleground state. As one Democratic state representative told us, “If you control Fulton County, that basically guarantees for Republicans they win every statewide race.”
For more, read our new piece.
—Ari Berman and Abby Vesoulis
