State Election Board special meeting May 17

UPDATE 5/16: Attorney General adds Spalding County Consolidated Consent Orders 2017-073 and 2020-157

UPDATE 4:11 p.m.: Agenda items

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, Election Division, has called a special meeting for Tuesday, May 17, at 8:30 a.m. The meeting will take place at the State Capitol, Room 341 and is open to the public.

Attorney General Chris Carr has added a consolidated consent order for Spalding County on 2017-073 AND 2020-157. While the State Elections Board was investigating Spalding for allegedly not having enough supplies on hand for voters, former Spalding County Elections Supervisor Marcia Ridley was hired by the City of Forest Park to handle its municipal elections supplies in 2021. The SEB referred Ridley to Carr’s office after supplies showing voter’s information allegedly were tossed in a dumpster.

On the agenda is an update on a complaint involving True the Vote, a Texas-based conservative group that has alleged election fraud in Georgia. In April, the Secretary of State’s office issued subpoenas after True the Vote alleged, without providing evidence, that “unnamed organizations paid unnamed individuals $10 per absentee ballot delivered to drop boxes across metro Atlanta.”

The subpoenas would require True the Vote to hand over any evidence to back their allegations. Previously, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had looked into True the Vote’s claims and found no evidence to warrant an investigation. The AJC’s Mark Niesse reported that True the Vote claimed it had used cellphone data to track people traveling to multiple dropboxes.

Also on the agenda: an update on early voting, as well as reports on three investigations of alleged ballot-harvesting in Gwinnett County. Those cases are SEB 2022-054, SEB 2022-055, and SEB 2022-056.