Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, Who Refused to “Find” Votes for Donald Trump, Prepares for Another Election
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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Ramnick. If you can name the Secretary of State for whatever state you live in, go ahead and give yourself a gold star in civics. But to be honest, I can't name mine. I can't name any of the other 49 Secretaries of State either.

Well, there's one big exception. Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State for Georgia. He became a national figure during a phone call that you probably heard about. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state and...

That was Donald Trump after the 2020 election, and he was in a lousy mood. You guys are so wrong, and you've treated this, you've treated the population of Georgia so badly. But why wouldn't you want to find the right answer, Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are right? Because those numbers are so wrong. After resisting Trump's demands, Raffensperger became the target of death threats from people in his own Republican Party.

The phone call is a linchpin in the racketeering case against Trump, led by the Fulton County DA, Fannie Willis. So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. Whatever happens in the criminal case, and who knows when it'll come, there's no doubt that Georgia will play a critical role in the election.

Once solidly Republican, Georgia went for Joe Biden in 2020 and gave both of its Senate seats to Democrats. And Raffensperger, who enraged the MAGA faction, was easily reelected. But when I spoke with Brad Raffensperger recently, I got a feel for just how precarious a position he's in. He's taking pains not to antagonize anybody in a party that is still overwhelmingly turning out for Donald Trump.

There have been multiple recounts, lawsuits, investigations, all confirming that Joe Biden was the winner in the state of Georgia in 2020. Now, Republicans in the state Senate want to investigate you for not overturning the results. What is your life like these days? And when is this going to stop? Well, right now we're focused on the 2024 elections. We don't look backwards. Some people like to live in the past. We live really in the now.

And that's making sure everyone's prepared. We have new congressional districts for 2024, and the counties have those correct. We just finished up our ballot building for the upcoming May primary. So we have that on our plate, and then we're looking at other threat vectors, such as cybersecurity or AI, things like that. So that keeps us busy. I'm sure it does, and I know your plate is very full with the present tense and the future.

And yet people in the Republican Party are all over you about the past. So how do you answer them? Well, number one, I give them two data points in the 2020 election. We actually had about 33,000 voters, Republican voters,

that didn't come back at all to vote in the fall. And then the ones, all the voters that did show up, what we noticed that there was 27,900 voters that skipped the top of the ticket. And the Republican congressman got about 27,500 more votes than President Trump. But our job was really to verify the result. All 5 million ballots, they were recounted and 100% hand recount. And the results were virtually the same. We had some counties that had three counts on those ballots and there was no difference whatsoever. But you have a

party in the state Senate that still wants to investigate you for not overturning the results. What does that tell you about the state of the Republican Party, which you've belonged for a very long time? Well, I know that if you look at the results of the voters, I believe it was 99% had a good voting experience. They trusted the results and also then just really enjoyed the experience because we've worked hard on making sure we keep those lines short, get the results posted quickly. So the voters give us high marks and then that's who I work for.

The criminal case against Donald Trump for election interference in Georgia has run into, I think it's no exaggeration to say, serious trouble related to the district attorney there, Fonny Willis. Can that case be salvaged or is it permanently damaged by questions about Fonny Willis' ethics? Well, I've been advised that I'm a potential witness for that case and I've been told that I should not comment further on that case. So that's where I have to leave that today.

Did you ever, in your wildest imagination, think that the issue of voting in the state of Georgia would become the issue it is, both in a serious sense and also the subject of Curb Your Enthusiasm? You know what? I got some water in the car. Do you want it? I would love it. Yeah, here you go. I knew this would come in handy. Sir! Sir!

You're under arrest for violation of the Election Integrity Act. What? What are you talking about? It is illegal for anyone in the state of Georgia to provide food or water to voters in line at the polls. What? That's barbaric. What kind of law? Are you serious? I'm dead serious. You're coming with me. You can't do it. Oh, no, you're making a big mistake. I'm sorry, baby. I forgot. I'm not

So the so-called violation of giving somebody a bottle of water online becomes a plot point for Larry David. Well, I'm sure he enjoyed that, and I enjoyed writing my letter back to him. What did you say to Larry David? Well, I told him basically, I'm sorry that he didn't get the warm welcome and VIP treatment that some celebrities and athletic stars get when they spend a few times, a few hours in the Fulton County Jail.

But here's really the fact about it. This is what's really crazy, is that in New York State, you cannot give anyone a bottle of water within that 150-foot zone. Yeah, I think it's 100 feet in New York. And in Georgia, what we found, though, is it wasn't the water issue. It was really politicking issues. People were electioneering within a 150-foot zone. They grabbed a bottle of water, but then they were coming in, they emblazoned with their T-shirt, and you know what cause they were supporting? And there they're trying to, quote, touch voters one more time before they went in to vote.

And we just want to have that to be a – just leave people alone. Let them make their own decisions. And so that's really why we wanted to clarify that with state law. But really, next year, maybe Larry David might go up to New York and talk about their laws. That's his home state, you know. It seems he's retired. It's kind of like you clean up your own house before you start picking on Georgia. We have shown that we have fair, honest, and accurate elections.

Well, when you encounter an election denier in your life, just out and about, do you find that you can convert an election denier's opinion while you're having a conversation over a cup of coffee or an encounter on the street? Well, it probably takes more than just two minutes.

I mean, talk about people switching votes. The first one of that, Stacey Abrams, no one wants to talk about that. But after she lost, we had record turnout. We had 4 million people show up for the gubernatorial race in 2018. Record turnout. And she started talking about voter suppression. And she said the machines were flipping the votes. So, you know, and that was with the old machines. And we did not have a verifiable paper ballot. And so... I take your point. But the one difference between Stacey Abrams and...

president trump is i don't think you got a phone call from stacy abrams trying to lean on you like in something out of goodfellas of the godfather

Well, at the end of the day, what we've shown is that we do have accurate results. And so we have a paper ballot, and you can recount all 100% of them if you want to, if you need to, if it's that close. Talk to me a little bit about what your life was like for you after the infamous phone call with Donald Trump when you declined to find, find in quotes, the 11,000 votes he was asking for. As I understand it, you received death threats. This must have been

terrifying to you and your family? Well, we got all those actually back in November, so, and through December. And like I said, it was a shock to the system. You have to think, Georgia had been reliably Republican for 20 years. We had the State House, the State Senate, all the constitutional officers, and then all of a sudden, we had this thing, you know, that flipped the other way. But I think if people really were watching what happened in 2018, Stacey Abrams lost by 55,000 votes.

And that was actually pretty close because you look at some of the other races. So obviously the Democrats have gained ground, but we expect a big turnout. There's no reason not to expect 5 million voters. We had 5 million show up in 2020 and wait COVID.

And it doesn't look like things have, you know, decreased in the decibels of our conversation, so it's highly polarized. Anyone can see that. That's not a political statement. That's just a statement of fact. Do you ever worry about what might happen in the state if Donald Trump does not take the state this time? No, because I believe at the end of the day, the voters decide these things, and we can verify every single vote.

But you have to understand, we don't use signature matches as the primary means of identifying our absentee ballots. It's photo ID. And that has just increased people's confidence in that. And that's something we actually pulled from Minnesota, which is a Democrat state, Kansas, and Nebraska. Those states have been using that for years. Sir, Donald Trump was talking about rigged elections in 2016. You knew they weren't rigged.

You kept faith in him. You voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Will you do so in November? Well, now that I'm Secretary of State, I've made it my position that I don't endorse candidates because I want voters to understand I'm the chief election official for the state. It did get me in trouble in 2020 that I didn't endorse, you know, Donald Trump as the candidate. Yes, I did vote for him. I shared that so people understood when I did my job, there's no animosity. I'm a conservative Republican. I voted for the team.

I want everyone in the state of Georgia to understand we're going to have a fair, honest election, and it's up to the candidates to turn out their people. But you were in a unique position. You had a president of the United States call you up and lean on you in the most overt way to distort an election, and I just wonder how that did or did not change your view of him. I wanted to make sure I gave him the information point by point.

about where we were and why all those allegations. When he mentioned that there's 5,000 dead people, I told him that there's two. Since then, we've found two more. But it was really the points that he raised, and we just wanted to go back point by point and just let him know that. But he wasn't calling you on the level of information. He could have had any aid do that. He was calling you to lean on you.

Well, we had the data on our side. My job is to follow the law, follow the Constitution. But like I said, when we started this off, I'm focused really on 2024. Given what happened in 2020, let's not talk about you for a moment, but to Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, who are election workers working honestly, who were falsely accused of stealing votes in Georgia.

How do you feel about what happened to Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, for example? Around the week of January 6th, the FBI informed me that I needed to leave my home for safety. I stayed away from my home for approximately two months. I felt homeless. I felt, I can't believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my family to have to leave my home that I've lived there for 21 years.

I've been really clear about that. That was, you know, incredibly unfortunate. It's horrifying. It had been investigated thoroughly and they didn't do anything wrong. We looked at it with our investigators. The GBI looked at it. The FBI looked at it. People said, oh, you can't trust the FBI anymore. But guess who else looked at it? President Trump's handpicked U.S. attorney, Bobby Christine. And he found nothing either.

But considering what happened to Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, which sounds terrifying. It was. Have you been having any trouble recruiting election workers? We've done a great job of recruitment. Could we use a few more? Yes. But we're probably good at all the county levels because people look at it as a way that it's a way for them to give back to their community. I'm speaking with Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia. We'll continue in a moment.

Every single aspect of a conflict...

And Pod Save America's Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor. I don't think we're going to fact check our way to victory. Follow Wired Politics Lab for in-depth conversations and analysis to help you navigate the upcoming election.

You've been a Republican all your life. You voted for Republican candidates, obviously. And yet I wonder how your view of Donald Trump's honesty or dishonesty was affected by the phone call that you received. Well, my role model has always been a conservative role model. I grew up with Ronald Reagan, and really he had a captivating personality. He was a committed conservative, but he also had charm.

When I was younger, sometimes it'd frustrate me that, you know, Reagan would go ahead and reach across the aisle and talk to Tip O'Neill. But he was older and wiser than me. And now I understand the wisdom of Reagan on that, because if you want to get things done in Congress, you do have to reach across. You want to get as much as you can from your side. It's interesting. What you're talking about reaching across the aisle is the kind of rhetoric and practice of Joe Biden that he's criticized for sometimes within the Democratic Party. It sounds like you have

have some affection for Biden's point of view on this? No, I have affection for Ronald Reagan. He's not on the ballot, sir. No, I know. But he kind of embodied the American spirit. And I think that's what people really want, is that spirit of freedom, liberty, you know, smaller government, but make sure it's efficient. We do have a role for government, but it has to be efficient with taxpayer dollars and really serve people. And people need to be served. Mr. Raffensperger, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Be well. Take care.

I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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