How Trump’s ‘pit bulls’ in Georgia gave him a powerful tool to throw out votes

At a rally in Georgia days before a crucial vote at the state’s election board, Donald Trump praised three of the board’s five members as “pit bulls fighting for victory.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way,” Trump said in Atlanta on August 3. “They’re on fire. They’re doing a great job.”

Those members — Rick Jeffares, Janelle King and Janice Johnston — ultimately voted for sweeping rule changes to how counties can certify election rules in a state that the former president lost by narrow margins in 2020, and where he is now criminally charged for his attempts to reverse that loss.

Election analysts predict the state could come down to even smaller vote margins in November, potentially inviting challenges from Trump-allied groups to do what Trump couldn’t in 2020, thanks to new, potentially illegal rules that could invite partisan investigations. The Democratic Party and a group of Georgia Democrats — with the support of Kamala Harris’s campaign — are now suing over the changes.

“Everyone who cares about American democracy and who wants to make sure their vote counts should be alarmed,” Georgia Democratic Representative Sam Park told The Independent.

With the first days of early voting approaching, “there’s a lot of cause for alarm,” according to Park, and there’s “a lot of fear and concern” among voters in his district who are worried about what happens to their ballots after they cast their votes.

Election workers are under an “incredible amount of undue pressure” from voter suppression threats, Park explained, and the “brazen effort in which unelected partisans have taken over the local elections boards, where elected leaders have conceded to their base, to