(The Center Square) – After Georgia called its election just hours into election night, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Monday that other states should learn from the measures it has taken.
Joined by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Donald Palmer, Raffensperger presented at an American Enterprise Institute event on the importance of election integrity.
“Georgia leads the nation in election management. Our elections are accurate, secure, free, fair and fast,” Raffensperger said. “With a new Congress, it’s a great opportunity to look at how we can improve the election process, not just for one or two states, but for all 50 states, so they all finish up as quickly as Georgia did this past election cycle.”
This comes as about three in 10 voters say they have “only a little” or no confidence in the nationwide election count, according to a poll from The Associated Press.
As one of seven battleground states, Georgia played a crucial role in this and the last presidential elections. The quick Election Night call was especially notable after 2020, when the state was not called until 16 days after the election, due to legal challenges and a hand recount.
“We had 5 million ballots back in 2020 and we actually hand counted all 5 million ballots,” Raffensperger said.
He said counties have made many changes since that election to polish their processes, partly due to state law changes granting the State Election Board authority to hold counties accountable using fines.
“Counties run the elections, but they can’t just say ‘we’re going to do whatever we want,” the Republican said.
This is especially important as cases pop up like what is currently happening in Pennsylvania, Raffensperger said, where county election officials are purposefully violating court rulings about what ballots to cast.
“People need to do their job. It’s as simple as that,” he said. “If we don’t do our job, follow the law, follow the Constitution, then we won’t have a country.”
Election reform is necessary across the nation, explained Raffensperger, who says Georgia is an example of how to successfully and quickly implement reforms.
Five steps should be a part of those reforms, including photo identification, citizenship verification, banning ballot harvesting, reforming the National Voter Registration Act, and election audits.
Another important part of ensuring secure elections in all states is consistent coordination between states, as well as between the federal government and state governments, Raffensperger said.
He added that this could be succeeded if more states participated in the Electronic Registration Information Center, which helped Georgia clean its voter rolls.
“Last year, we found 432,000 people through ERIC,” Raffensperger said. “We want to make sure we can collect all that data. That’s really important.”
Georgia also went out of its way to connect with states not currently a part of ERIC, like Florida and Texas, and use their records to also help ensure the voter rolls are up-to-date.
It’s only when more states start taking security measures like these that voters will regain their confidence in the election process, Raffensperger said.
“When a society is extremely polarized, like ours is right now, the number one thing that we need to make sure we have not just security, but trust,” Raffensperger said. “That is the true gold standard.”
