AJC oped from former Ga. governor:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has taken on election denialists, most notably former President Donald Trump’s call to “find 11,780 votes.” For that, we owe him our thanks. Trump and his cohorts, many based in Georgia, tried to do everything they could to steal, nullify or overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, and Raffensperger could have joined other current or former elected officials in aiding in that process. But he stood firm, and many independents and Democrats joined Republicans in rewarding him for doing his job. He and Gabe Sterling convincingly demonstrated there was no voter fraud and Georgia’s election laws were strong and fair.

That’s why it’s disheartening and frankly upsetting to see Raffensperger’s defense of actions which he supported that make it more difficult to vote. In a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Raphael Warnock, Election Denier,” Raffensperger calls out re-elected Sen. Raphael Warnock for crying voter suppression. But Warnock has merely pointed out many of Raffensperger’s actions that line up more with Trump than the secretary would care to admit. If there were no voter fraud, how can Raffensperger advocate for more difficult voter procedures which discourage full voter participation? A cynic would suggest it is for political purposes.

You can start with the atrocious administration of the 2020 June primary which saw a botched rollout of the new voting machines. In the middle of a pandemic, many voters in Fulton County waited in line for three hours or more, even though Raffensperger had delayed the presidential primary and the general primary that year to give time to fix lingering issues. Instead of saying the buck stopped with him, he asked the state legislature to give him the authority to intervene in county election offices that had issues.

He could have merely acknowledged that Fulton, as the largest county, was going to be more prone to rollout issues than smaller counties. But his actions laid the groundwork for future conspiracy theories that Trump seized on and ultimately put Fulton election workers’ lives in danger….

We owe Raffensperger our appreciation for doing the right thing when it came to Trump. But he also owes Georgians elections where voter suppression is truly a thing of the past. That means owning up to failures like 2-hour lines and not just accusing everyone who disagrees with him of being an election denier.