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Georgia’s election denial network of public officials, unhinged online personalities and average citizens spent yesterday ricocheting between joy and despair — and it had nothing to do with the results that began to roll in last night.

Led by Trump allies on the State Election Board (SEB) and a handful of far-right state lawmakers and political candidates, election denial forces here have spent weeks fear mongering and successfully placing clips in right-wing media over the Secretary of State’s election night operation center that the election deniers have deemed a “secret bunker.”

In fact, the “Election Night Reporting Center,” as the Secretary of State’s Office calls it, is not, and never has been, a secret. Nor are any votes actually counted there, as SEB members and a pair of Republican candidates who filed a lawsuit to gain access to the “bunker” have alluded. Votes are counted at county offices of elections, which then send those totals to the Secretary of State. There, the totals are put online for the public to see.

But Georgia’s election denial wing of the Republican party does not trust Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of their demands that all elections be administered and all votes be counted by those who pass a litmus test that includes abject support for Donald Trump and a fervent belief in lies and conspiracies about widespread election fraud. That wing includes the MAGA majority on the SEB and figures like Greg Dolezal, a state senator, and Christopher Mora, a candidate for one of Georgia’s U.S. House seats.

Dolezal and Mora filed a lawsuit this week demanding that the SEB and Republican poll watchers be granted access to the reporting center at the Secretary of State’s Office. On Tuesday, a judge briefly ordered that that access should be granted before rescinding the order on a technicality, thus prompting the back-and-forth emotions on display by Georgia’s vast network of election denial officials and activists.

While much of the coverage of these developments has covered the lawsuit, opposing judicial orders and the reporting center under the both sides framework, key context has been absent: the SEB (and its MAGA “pitbulls,” as Trump has called them), Dolezal and Mora have had months — years, really — to make their claim that poll watchers and other observers should be legally allowed to oversee election night proceedings at the Secretary of State’s reporting center. The simple and obvious reason that they did not file their lawsuit until this week is that it would not have benefitted them from a political and media-savvy standpoint to do so.

By filing the lawsuit this week, Georgia’s election deniers took advantage of public interest in Tuesday’s primaries to gin up further distrust in elections. Raffensperger has a secret bunker where he could manipulate votes! He’s running in the very election that his office is charged with overseeing! He won’t let us into the bunker to ensure he isn’t stealing the election for himself and other people who are bad!

In the last 48 hours, these have been the stupefyingly insincere arguments that Dolezal, Mora, the SEB and others have made. Maybe many of them actually believe their own nonsense, but just as many understand that the best way to secure elections for MAGA candidates is to sow as much doubt as possible in all elections. By doing so, election deniers think they can convince the public that they, and only they, should be allowed to administer elections, make rules about voting and polling locations, and effectively control all levers of government in order to ensure that real Americans are in charge.

You see this mindset reflected in statements from Trump administration officials and Republican members of Congress every single day when they say things like how they want to pass the SAVE Act to ensure that “the right people” are voting. It’s part of a playbook that includes the aggressive redistricting of the South to dilute Black — and in turn mostly Democratic — voting power. From this week’s nonsense over the “secret bunker,” to efforts across the country to purge voters based on false and misleading claims about undocumented immigrants voting in elections — every policy and talking point about voting and elections pushed by the vast majority of Republicans is aimed at a singular goal: using the levers of power to ensure that they maintain their grip on it, regardless of what American voters say at the ballot box.

Other election night takeaways:

Massie vs. whoever

Rep. Thomas Massie lost to a man whose name most voters probably did not even know until they arrived at their polling locations in Kentucky yesterday. That’s because the majority of those voters were simply doing what Trump told them to do — get Massie out of office by voting for the other guy. Why was Trump so adamant that Massie had to go? Because Massie had the gall to be one of the only elected Republicans in the country to ask serious questions about the president’s ties to Jeffery Epstein. Just a few years ago, nailing politicians and powerful figures with Epstein ties was a huge deal for Republican voters! But what they actually meant was that they wanted to imprison people like Bill Clinton, not Donald Trump. It’s sort of like all the MAGA folks you see with the Gadsden flag. They don’t really mean Don’t tread on me; what they really mean is Tread on them. But don’t believe the hype Massie’s loss — it was a primary in a very Trumpy state. Considering Trump’s dismal approval ratings, this is like winning a preseason football game.

Jones (Trump) vs. Jackson (cash)

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will head to a runoff with billionaire Rick Jackson to become the state’s next governor. If you’re not in Georgia, this race may not seem important but here’s why it matters: Jones has been instrumental in not just spreading Trump’s lies about election fraud but propagating rules and systems that have allowed the MAGA wing of his party more control over elections here. Considering Georgia’s role as something close to a swing state, Jones becoming governor stands to have an important effect on how elections and voting are run here — and how those rules will help and hurt Republicans and Democrats.

Jones was responsible for appointing Salleigh Grubbs to the SEB, where she has quickly become the most forceful and unhinged voice of Georgia’s election denial movement who has any position of power (albeit very little). You might remember Grubbs as the woman who chased a garbage truck in 2020 because she thought it contained shredded ballots. As this week’s madness over the “secret bunker” played out, Grubbs was out front on the issue, appearing on Mike Lindell’s “news” channel.

Jones is also one of Trump’s fake electors who was never fully punished for, you know, fraudulently trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Rick Jackson is just another loaded guy who thinks his billions entitles him to run things. Not great choices! One of the two will face former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the general.

Who will lose to Jon Ossoff?

A pair of MAGA backbenchers — Rep. Mike Collins and Derek Dooley — are headed to a runoff for the honor of probably losing to Sen. Jon Ossoff. Collins is most famous for his work on the Laken Riley Act, a classically regressive piece of legislation built, more than anything, to give him an “I hate immigrants more than most” talking point on the campaign trail. Dooley was once the head football coach for the University of Tennessee, so is therefore obviously qualified to join the United States Senate.

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