ATLANTA (AP) — On Election Day last November, one of Georgia’s top election officials said reports of problems with voting machines in an eastern Pennsylvania county were gaining attention online. I realized that.
So amid an onslaught of threats, Republican Gabriel Sterling, who defended Georgia’s 2020 election, posted a message to his roughly 71,000 followers on social platform He explained that all votes would be counted correctly.
One commenter quickly came under fire for asking why he would influence elections in other states, while other responses repeated false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
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“This is still the right thing to do,” Sterling said at a rally the next day, stressing the importance of Republican officials speaking out to protect the election. “We have to be prepared to say over and over again, other states do things differently than we do, but they’re not cheating.”
Sterling, chief operating officer of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, is part of an effort begun after the last presidential election to bring together Republican officials willing to protect the country’s election system and the people who run it. be. They are calling on authorities to reinforce the message that the election is secure and accurate, arguing that this approach is especially important as the country heads toward another polarizing presidential election.
The group has held meetings in multiple states, with more planned before the Nov. 5 election.
With six months left until a likely rematch between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump, public distrust of voting and vote counting persists, especially among Republicans. Concerns are growing among election officials that this may be the case. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, continues to sow doubts about the last presidential election, claiming, without providing any evidence, that Democrats are trying to steal the next presidential election. warns supporters.
Last week, during a campaign rally in Michigan, President Trump repeated false claims that Democrats rigged the 2020 election. “But we will not allow them to rig the presidential election,” he said.
A poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only 22% of Republicans expressed high confidence that their votes would be accurately counted in November.
read more: AP-NORC poll finds false claims about election undermine confidence in Republican vote count
“It’s incumbent on the Republican Party to stand up to protect our system, because our party bears some responsibility for the position we’re in,” said the Republican, who is running for re-election. Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said: last year. “But it’s also strategically smart for Republicans to say, ‘Republicans, you can trust this. Please stay home.'”
The effort, which began about 18 months ago, is being coordinated by Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute and the center-right think tank R Street Institute. The goal was to start a conversation among mostly conservative officials about trust in elections and develop a set of principles to achieve it.
“This has never been, and will never be, Trump-specific,” said Matt Germer, director of governance at the R Street Institute and lead organizer of the effort. . “This is about higher-level democratic principles. What does it mean to be a conservative who believes in democracy and the rule of law?”
He is an election official who could find himself in a situation similar to the one in 2020 when Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger supported Trump but rejected his false claims that the election was stolen. The aim is to establish a system to support the Georgia prosecutors later charged Trump and others with conspiracy to overturn the results. Mr. Trump has maintained his innocence.
“You can be a Republican and believe everything the Republican Party says without saying the election was stolen,” Garmer said.
The group’s guiding principle is for Republican officials to “publicly affirm the security and integrity of elections across the United States and avoid actively stirring up doubts about elections in other jurisdictions.”
Kim Wyman, a Republican who previously served as Washington state’s top elections official, said that when officials face questions about elections elsewhere, don’t avoid them by facilitating the process in your own state. said that it is important.
Wyman said it’s OK to say he doesn’t know the various laws and procedures in other states, but he wants Republicans to share what each state has in common: “Ensuring safety measures and elections are conducted. He urged them to emphasize “control measures to He acted with integrity. ”
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican who has attended meetings organized by the group, said he believes there are certain aspects of the election that officials should feel comfortable talking about. But he said he remains wary of speaking directly about specific things happening in other states.
“If I start to overstep my boundaries and my role, they won’t trust me. And if they don’t trust me, they won’t trust Kansas elections. This is very important.” Schwab said in the paper. interview.
Some election officials, who have questions about out-of-state election procedures, have a different perspective.
West Virginia Republican Secretary of State Mac Warner, who has questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, said he would focus on improving policies, such as implementing voter ID requirements across the country, rather than silencing those with doubts. He said he should guess.
“Our main job as election officials is to foster trust, and that comes from strengthening the protocol, not weakening it,” he said.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) has questioned the way other states conduct elections, filing what he calls an “activist lawsuit” and seeking to change voting rules previously set by lawmakers. criticized state authorities.
“What’s going wrong in other states is not the result of some hidden cabal conspiracy,” he said in an interview. “It’s all the outlandish things that make for good YouTube videos and you know what, but the real issues going on in other states are out in the open. , completely in the public eye.”
Utah Lt. Gov. Deirdre Henderson, the state’s top elections official and a Republican who is participating in the group’s discussions, said another reason was to avoid criticizing other states and vouch for the legitimacy of election procedures. said it was important. Threats or harassment directed at election officials.
A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that nearly 40% of local election officials have experienced such abuse. Many people have quit their jobs because of this. Of Utah’s 29 clerks, 20 are new to the state since 2020 and nine have never overseen an election, Henderson said.
“It’s one thing to imply that someone can do better. It’s another thing to criticize someone’s integrity or character, accuse them of wrongdoing, or accuse them of something egregious that hasn’t even happened.” Henderson said. “I’m tired.”
Associated Press writer Julie Kerr Smith in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.