One of Georgia’s Republican Party officials was ousted after an administrative law judge determined that he had cast nine unlawful ballots after moving to the state. After the closed meeting on Friday, state chairman Josh McKoon announced that the state Republican Committee had voted 146-24 to remove Brian K. Pritchard, the party’s first vice chairman.
Georgia is among several state Republican parties that have gone through upheaval as Donald Trump followers have taken over at the grassroots level, toppling incumbent leaders and demanding that the party give Trump’s unfounded allegations of fraud in the 2020 election priority.
Several well-established Republicans in Georgia, including Governor Brian Kemp, have left the state party. Kemp, for instance, has no intention of attending the state Republican Convention in Columbus next week.
The zeal is working, though, since several modifications to Georgia election legislation have resulted from calls for “election integrity.” Kemp signed legislation earlier this week that will facilitate the removal of individuals from the voter registers by challenging their eligibility.
Republicans pushed through a broad rule in 2021 that permitted only limited use of ballot drop boxes, decreased the period for seeking a ballot by mail, and outlawed giving food or water to voters in queues close to a voting station.
Because of that emphasis, many Republican activists found the results against Pritchard to be quite embarrassing. After Pritchard admitted to faking signatures on two checks totaling $38,000 in his native Pennsylvania in 1996, Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs determined in March that he was still on probation when he relocated to Gilmer County, north Georgia.
She decided Pritchard had lied when he registered to vote in 2008, claiming he was not serving a jail term for a felony conviction. Finding that Pritchard had cast nine fraudulent ballots between 2008 and 2010, Boggs penalized him $5,000, mandated that he be publicly chastised, and mandated that he pay back the $375 the State Election Board had spent looking into the matter.
Long denied any misconduct, Pritchard, the host of an internet conservative talk show, claimed he didn’t realize he was still on probation in 2008. Pritchard said McKoon and others were after him to resign because he was opposing so-called RINOs, or Republicans in name only.
“My mission was clear: to steer our party back on course and ensure that in 2024, Donald J. Trump would rightfully reclaim his position as our nation’s leader,” Pritchard said on Facebook back in April. But as soon as I started to question the accepted wisdom and pose the difficult issues, I encountered a deluge of internal opposition. You know, challenging their authority is considered heresy by the deeply ingrained RINO establishment. They would much sooner keep their hold on power than defend the principles we uphold.”
Friday following the vote, McKoon declared that Pritchard’s refusal to resign made his removal imperative. In a statement, McKoon stated, “Today’s vote demonstrates how serious we take election integrity.”
Agreed upon by other party activists. Posting on the social media site X, vocal Trump supporter Debbie Dooley said, “It was the right thing to do.” “Electing Donald Trump and battling election fraud and integrity should be the main priorities.”
The removal of Pritchard may be a pretext for a developing dispute over Georgia’s Republican National Committee representation. Delegates will choose two other members of the committee in addition to McKoon, who is automatically a member of it; last time, they were Committeewoman Ginger Howard and Committeeman Jason Thompson.
Now, those two must contend with opponents motivated in part by the same factors that helped Pritchard win an election the year before. Among these is Shawn Cross, the wife of David Cross, the party’s Second Vice-Chairman and one of Pritchard’s most outspoken supporters. On Friday, David Cross declined to speak with The Associated Press after criticizing the news organization’s earlier coverage of the State Election Board.
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Other contenders are predicted to be Jason Frazier, who has been involved in posing voter eligibility questions, and Amy Kremer, who began her career in Republican politics as a Tea Party member before turning into a fervent Trump supporter. Permits for the January 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” event in Washington were granted by a group Kremer headed. Later on, some rallygoers attacked the US Capitol.