As the rumours surrounding the dumpster and the false claims of thrown-out ballots spread, Ben Johnson, a local tech entrepreneur, tweeted at L Lin Wood, a lawyer who led efforts to challenge the 2020 results in Georgia and Michigan on behalf of Trump.
Johnson claimed to have “the source video for ballots found in the dumpster in Spalding County”, as reported by the Daily Beast, citing since-deleted posts.
Less than a year later, Johnson, whose posts also appear to support pro-QAnon conspiracy theories, became chair of the Spalding County election board.
Most recently, in August, Gabriel Sterling, a top Republican election official in the state, posted on X that the “actual evidence points to no fraud” in Georgia’s 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections.
Johnson shot back, “Gabe’s pic[ture] is beside the definition of #gaslighting on dictionary.com”
But Dexter Wimbish, a local lawyer and one of two Democratic members on the election board, feels there is more behind Johnson’s appointment. Prior to 2020, the election board was divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats. The fifth and final member was chosen by coin toss.
But after the election, Republican state legislators passed a law mandating that three top county judges instead choose the final board member. As those judges are conservative, Wimbish explained, the change all but guaranteed that Republicans would dominate the board.
“I really believe that Spalding County is sort of a test site for the right in terms of coming up with local strategies to to interfere with the election process,” Wimbish said.
He pointed to a recent decision by the board to require hand-counting audits of one local and one federal race, which he argued could lead to protracted litigation after election day, while stoking confusion.
Concerns peaked when Georgia’s state board passed new election rules that allowed county officials to investigate and potentially not certify election results in some cases. A report by Pro-Publica identified Spalding, along with Troup and Ware, as counties in Georgia with election boards dominated by election sceptics that could have outsized influence in light of those rules.
However, a Georgia judge has since declared the new rules “illegal, unconstitutional and void”, saying that local officials were mandated to certify the election results. The state’s Supreme Court has said it will not intervene before the election.
Spalding County Democratic Committee vice chair Elbert Solomon speaks from his office in Griffin, Georgia [Joseph Stepansky/Al Jazeera]
But in places like Spalding County, there may still be trouble, local observers warn.
Wimbish, the Democrat member of the Spalding County election board, told Al Jazeera, “it’s clear that the majority of the board welcomes litigation because they think the litigation is going to bring about their their desired outcome…I still think there’s a strong possibility that we’re going to see some sort of election controversy in Spalding County with the upcoming election.”
Elbert Solomon, the vice chair of the Spalding County Democratic Committee, has also been a vocal critic of the new board.
“Here in Spalding, if they could come up with some reason not to certify the election, I believe they would,” Solomon told Al Jazeera from his office in Griffin.
“They have the majority vote.”
For his part, Johnson has maintained during public meetings that the board seeks to act in a non-partisan manner. He did not respond to a request for an interview from Al Jazeera.