One-on-one with outgoing Secretary of State

We want to talk politics now because Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is preparing to leave office and he's Georgia's outgoing Secretary of State and he sat down for a one-on-one interview with our Deidre Dukes and she's joining us now live from outside the state capitol and Deidre obviously he's moving on to his next chapter but and he's looking back at his time as Secretary of State. Very interesting conversation Tyler and I was really struck by when talking to And to him and also Talking to Secretary-elect Penny Brown Reynolds, how the start of their tenure really will have paralleled each other because the Secretary-elect, she will come into office and one of her first major duties will be to help Jordan's transition to a new voting system, one that our state lawmakers are weighing and considering what new election system we will be voting on starting in And in talking to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, he He reminded me that that's exactly what he had to do, what was one of his first duties when he took office back in 2019 because the state was in fact transitioning to a new voting system. And so he talked about the challenges there, what he faced. Georgia was using electronic voting machines without a paper ballot when he took office. So his office had to take bids. They had to get new equipment out to counties and they really had to train local election officials ahead of the 2020 presidential primary. Well, as As we all can recall, that was a very, very pivotal time in our nation's history, really world history, because COVID hit around that time and Georgia had to get through its first election cycle with the new equipment in the middle of a global pandemic. And so the state postponed the rest of the presidential primary and mailed absentee ballot applications to every active voter. Georgians could still vote in person, of course, but they made that massive shift. And Raffensperger says one of the biggest challenges was what election workers could do after the polls closed with paper ballots. They could count the votes by hand to check the results or conduct a recount thanks to the changes in our voting system. And so he talked about all that was done to ensure and really make Georgians confident that our voting system is safe and secure. We have secured the vote. We've done citizenship audits. We've done obviously making sure we have photo ID now for absentee voting. People said signature match was very subjective. That's what I said when I ran back in 2018. But the General Assembly at the time didn't have the will to do anything until after 2020. And I said, well, they should have changed that. In fact, look what's going on with Mississippi right now with their absentee ballots, you know, kind of, who won this last, you know, Senate race. They're accepting absentee ballots two weeks after. That's the same as California. That doesn't fly here in Georgia. We make sure that they have to be in by close business day. That builds trust and confidence. You have to make sure that there's laws, but then there's also the things, the soft things things of trust and confidence because that's what holds society together. The rule of law is very important, but so are trust and confidence, because then people actually trust the law, they trust because you're doing the right thing and building confidence in the whole process. Confidence in the whole process, Tyler. And ultimately, as you heard the Secretary of State say there, that is so, so important. And one thing that he did say that his office and those who work on his team can be proud of and all of those here across the state of Georgia counties, election officials and those they work with, poll workers can all be. Really proud of the fact, he said, that they have worked over the years during his time in office to ensure that Georgia elections are safe and secure. And he says as our state lawmakers look to what will be the next system that we'll all vote on, he said that they can be confident in knowing that a strong, great framework has been laid out for them to do so to build on in coming years, Tyler. Yeah, and Deidre, you do a special every couple of months for us called Deidre Dukes Reports, and this interview was for that, so people can look forward to being able to hear a lot more from what he has to say, correct? That's right. Absolutely. And also hearing from experts and other lawmakers, those leaving office, those ready to kind of take the baton, so to speak, as it were, in January when they take office as to what's ahead and the challenges they'll face. So when does that special air? November, December, something like that? We're going to see it in December. December, December, second week in December. Yeah, well, we'll be looking for that. Deidre Dukes, thanks so much. And you always do a great job putting that together. So we'll be looking for that.