Members of Georgia’s Election Board Have Been Coordinating With Cleta Mitchell’s Network

The Georgia State Election Board meets in Marietta in March. Mauricio Rodriguez Pons/ProPublica In the run-up to the midterms, members of Georgia’s State Election Board and much of its professional staff were coordinating with an activist group led by Cleta Mitchell, the conservative attorney who worked with President Donald Trump to try to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. The board sets the swing state’s election rules , oversees the conduct of its election officials and investigates allegations of fraud. Recordings of private calls and events reviewed by ProPublica show current and former state board members working with the Election Integrity Network and allied organizations on shared priorities. Among them: advancing the use of a controversial, error-prone software tool known as ELLY to search voter rolls for purportedly suspicious voters.