Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is objecting to efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024, as some groups continue to push the initiative in several states.
Raffensperger said in an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal that voters should be allowed to decide whether Trump wins the primary and becomes president next November.
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"Mr. Trump might win the nomination and general election. Or he could lose. The outcomes should be determined by the people who show up to make their preference known in primaries (including Georgia’s on March 12) and the general election on Nov. 5," Raffensperger said.
"A process that denies voters their chance to be the deciding factor in the nomination and election process would erode the belief in our uniquely American representative democracy," he continued.
Some conservative legal scholars and critics of the former president say the 14th Amendment bars those who’ve taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding office again if they’ve “engaged in insurrection” against the United States or “given aid or comfort” to its enemies. They argue that Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election disqualify him under those rules.
Free Speech For People, a legal advocacy group, sent letters to top election officials across nine states including New Hampshire last month asking them to keep Trump from the ballot. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal advocacy group representing six Republicans and unaffiliated voters, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to keep Trump off Colorado's ballot.
Trump has called the attempts to disqualify him a "trick" and said they have no legal standing.
However, Raffensperger said people's argument to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify Trump from the ballot is the "newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box."
"Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn’t work," Raffensperger said. "Stacey Abrams’s claims of election mismanagement following the 2018 election were rejected in court, as were Mr. Trump’s after the 2020 election."
Raffensperger added that the 2024 election "won't be decided by prosecutors" and will not be decided by the vice president, "whose role is simply to oversee a joint session of Congress in which each state’s electors are counted," hinting at Trump's claims that former Vice President Mike Pence could have stopped the certification of President Joe Biden's 2020 victory.
"The American people will make their own decisions," Raffensperger said. "Country music singer Luke Bryan, a fellow Georgian, said it best: 'Most people are good.' Most of the time they will get it right. Trust the voters."
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Raffensperger has repeatedly gone against the former president, discounting any claims that the 2020 election was stolen or affected by voter fraud. He announced in mid-August that the state would conduct updates to voter lists and put out a news release regarding the office's commitment to election security in 2024.
“Exercises like these ensure that Georgia’s elections are prepared for any possible threat,” Raffensperger said of the office's security exercises in the release. “Preparation is key, and we’re ready.”