(The Center Square) – A battle is brewing between the Georgia Senate and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the release of voter information to the Department of Justice.
Five Republican senators introduced a resolution urging Raffensperger, a gubernatorial candidate, to give the Justice Department information that includes Social Security numbers and birthdates.
The Justice Department sued Raffensperger last month, stating that the information he provided in late 2025 was not complete.
The Senate resolution said it is not the first time Raffensperger has refused to answer questions about elections.
The resolution, in part, reads, “…the secretary’s refusal to comply with the Department of Justice’s request is the latest example of a pattern of behavior by the Secretary and his office to refuse oversight of his administration of Georgia’s elections, which includes his refusal on numerous occasions to personally appear before the Senate Ethics Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee and his and his office’s willful and persistent obstruction of the Georgia State Election Board in its efforts to ensure that Georgia’s elections are secure and that Georgia’s election integrity laws are properly administered and enforced.”
State law bars the release of the information, the secretary of state said.
“Our office has complied with Department of Justice’s request to the fullest extent of state law,” a statement from the office says. “If the Senate wishes for our office to release every Georgia voter’s driver’s license number, date of birth, and Social Security number with no clear limits or supervision, they need to change the law they wrote and passed.”
Georgia’s elections are at the center of a firestorm that began in 2020 when second-term Republican President Donald Trump questioned his loss to former Democratic President Joe Biden.
Recently, some Republicans called for an investigation into Fulton County’s failure to have poll workers properly sign tabulation tapes that included 315,000 votes.
Raffensperger’s office said, “A clerical error at the end of the day does not erase valid, legal votes.”
“Based on the reports from appointed monitors who were on site in Fulton County reviewing the conduct of the election – there was sloppiness that needed improvement, but outright fraud was not a concern,” said Robert Sinners, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office.
New procedures were put in place to ensure the mistake doesn’t happen again, Ann Brumbaugh, an attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, told the State Election Board in December.
The 2020 election was recounted twice, and then, subject to a 100% hand count, according to Sinners.
Phil Kent, a conservative panelist on “The Georgia Gang” weekly TV show and publisher of James magazine, told TCS that the ongoing uproar is about holding accountable anyone who took part in manipulation and fraud.
“I think that the U.S. attorney would be looking at it – who’s a Trump appointee named Teddy Hertzberg,” Kent said. “That would be the bottom line: an investigation by the U.S. attorney or the U.S. Justice Department, with Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division.”
