An Atlanta-area county has appointed a staunch election denier, with a history of challenging voter registrations, to the county’s board of registration and elections, a pivotal position to cast doubt on the results of future elections.
DeKalb county’s Republican committee nominated Gail Lee and a second Republican activist, but the nomination of William Henderson was rejected last week by the chief judge of the DeKalb county superior court, Shondeana Morris, after a letter campaign against the two promoted by the county’s Democratic committee and voting rights activists.
Lee has challenged the registration of hundreds of voters in DeKalb county since the 2020 election, beginning her efforts after Donald Trump’s narrow loss to Joe Biden in 2020. Lee told CBS News in December 2023 that she still believed Trump won, and attended a 2022 conference in Georgia hosted by the Election Integrity Network – a 2020 election denialist group linked to the Trump campaign.
“Putting a known election denier who has repeatedly tried to remove voters from the rolls on the DeKalb county elections board is a slap in the face to DeKalb voters,” Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director for the voting rights advocacy organization All Voting Is Local, said in a statement.
“Lee is the architect of mass voter challenges against her neighbors in DeKalb county,” she added. “Time and time again, she has attempted to strip Georgians of their right to vote and perpetuated a stream of lies about our elections and the hardworking officials who administer them. Those who repeatedly push lies about voting and support dangerous attempts to overturn the results should have no say over our elections.”
Lee did not return a call and text seeking comment.
About 370,000 of DeKalb county’s 500,000 registered voters cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential election, and Kamala Harris won 82% of them, representing about one in eight votes she won in the state.
The county’s Republican and Democratic parties each nominate two people to serve on the county’s elections board in two-year terms. The fifth member is named by the county’s chief superior court judge.
In a letter explaining her rejection of Henderson, Morris cited “over 200 pieces of correspondence from the public” as well as his public statements and “an ongoing lawsuit filed by Mr Henderson against the board”.
Henderson is also a prolific challenger of voter registrations in DeKalb county. In 2024, he filed a lawsuit in superior court alleging the DeKalb county board of registration and elections violated the law by refusing to consider challenges to voters’ eligibility within 90 days of the election. Morris cited the suit as a conflict creating an impediment to his appointment.
“I do not believe that appointing Mr Henderson to the board would further the goals of ensuring that elections are credible and trustworthy in the eyes of the public,” Morris wrote. “Rather, I am concerned that his appointment would do the opposite, as he has already sought to do through his public statements in the past.”
Henderson disagreed with Morris’s decision, describing his legal action as a writ of mandamus and not a lawsuit.
Asked if he believed the 2020 election had been fairly conducted, Henderson said: “The 2020 election happened five years ago and it’s not anything that we should be concerned with right now.” He added that asking the question at all was indicative of bias.
“My whole reason for being involved in this is to try and make sure that our voter roll is accurate, concise, legal and clean,” Henderson said. He characterized the opposition to his nomination as “manufactured” by Democrats and the League of Women Voters through a social media campaign. “I don’t think those 200 letters were relevant.”
