rollingstone.com - Trump georgia laboratory rig

The Peach State is unique — it’s the sole battleground state in which the Republican Party has total control over the levers of power: a trifecta in the state House, Senate, and governorship. Over the past four years, Trump-loving elements of the Georgia GOP have wielded that advantage in a crusade to convert discredited election-conspiracy theories into policies well ahead of Election Day 2024. It is an alarmingly anti-democratic experiment that Trumpland and much of the GOP hope to take national.

“Georgia is our laboratory,” a source close to the former president tells Rolling Stone. “If you can get this up and running in Georgia, you get a road map for other states, maybe the country as a whole.”

At the state level, the state GOP has put restrictions on early voting, limited voting by mail, and restricted ballot drop boxes. There's also the well publicized prohibition of providing food or water to people waiting in line to vote. They've limited the Secretary of State's role in elections (sorry, Brad, you're not Trumpy enough). The challenges that activists can file has been greatly expanded. Private charitable contributions to state and county election boards to help pay for election administration has been banned, making it easier for frivolous challenges to disrupt the counting and certification of elections. County election boards are supposed to be split 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans. But one board has booted off a Democrat and replaced them with someone the local Democratic party has never heard of - but who is claimed by the GOP members to be a Democrat.

Keep a close eye on Georgia.

--Peter