1. Bradford Jay Raffensperger was born on May 18,1955 and is an American businessman, civil engineer, and politician serving as the secretary of state of Georgia since 2019.
24 Facts About Brad Raffensperger
1. 2.
Brad Raffensperger refused to do so, and said the outgoing president's claims were based on falsehoods.
3.
Brad Raffensperger was reelected in the 2022 Georgia Secretary of State election, after defeating Trump-backed Jody Hice in the Republican primary and Democratic challenger Bee Nguyen in the general election.
4.
Brad Raffensperger earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Business Administration from Georgia State University.
5.
Brad Raffensperger is the chief executive officer of Tendon Systems, LLC, a contracting and engineering firm that operates in Columbus, Georgia, and Forsyth County, Georgia.
6.
Brad Raffensperger served on the Post 2 seat of the Johns Creek City Council from 2012 to 2014.
7.
Brad Raffensperger resigned in November 2014 to run for the special election to represent the 50th district in the Georgia House, and was succeeded by Chris Coughlin.
8.
Brad Raffensperger subsequently won his bid to the Georgia House in 2015, succeeding Lynne Riley.
9.
Brad Raffensperger sponsored a measure to amend the Georgia state constitution to allow the re-creation of a county that previously existed but had later merged with another county; the measure would allow northern Fulton County to split off to form Milton County.
10.
Brad Raffensperger ran for the Secretary of State of Georgia in the 2018 election.
11.
Brad Raffensperger defeated Barrow in a runoff election on December 4,2018.
12.
In 2019, Brad Raffensperger fought 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, as she contested his action to remove 300,000 names from the voter registration rolls, and he won the case.
13.
Brad Raffensperger did not send out mail-in ballot applications to every active registered voter in Georgia for the November 2020 general election, citing the cost of a mass mailing.
14.
Rather, Brad Raffensperger created an online portal for Georgia voters to request absentee ballots.
15.
Brad Raffensperger encouraged voters to take advantage of in-person early voting and mail-in voting.
16.
The November 2020 general election in Georgia went smoothly, avoiding the problems that had plagued the primary election in June; Brad Raffensperger credited the successful process to the record numbers of voters who cast ballots before Election Day, either by mail or during Georgia's three-week period of in-person early voting.
17.
Brad Raffensperger denied this, although he did say that fellow Republicans were pressuring him to find ways to exclude legal ballots.
18.
Brad Raffensperger said that South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham pressured him in a call to throw out postal ballots favoring Biden.
19.
Doug Collins, a Republican congressman from Georgia who lost his race and oversaw Trump's efforts in Georgia, falsely claimed fraud in the Georgia election, prompting Brad Raffensperger, typically known for his mild manner, to call Collins a "liar" and "charlatan" for his rhetoric.
20.
Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2,2021, during which President Trump urged the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to 'find' enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.
21.
Brad Raffensperger testified in public hearings before the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on June 21,2022.
22.
In early 2023, Georgia's state legislature denied a $25 million request by Brad Raffensperger to implement the 2022 security update for Dominion Voting Systems machines before the 2024 elections, though the QR codes will be eliminated by 2026.
23.
Brad Raffensperger is a member of the North Point Community Church.
24.
Donald Trump has falsely claimed that Brad Raffensperger has a brother, Ron, who "works for China", but Brad Raffensperger's only brother is not named Ron and does not work for or in China.