Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Each day Beast
The Republican chair of a rural Georgia election board—which has the facility to limit or broaden entry to voting, name for audits and investigations into alleged voter fraud, and certify election outcomes—is a QAnon-fixated election conspiracy theorist, The Each day Beast has discovered.
Appointed to his place final yr, Ben Johnson heads the five-member Spalding County Board of Elections and Registration, which was just lately taken over by Republicans as a part of broader GOP efforts throughout the state to safe energy over elections. Johnson’s fellow board members know him as a well mannered and succesful chair, even when they generally disagree together with his conservative politics, present and former colleagues have stated.
However his private Twitter account tells a extra difficult story.
Since not less than September 2020, Johnson has been tweeting credulously about QAnon, the far-right conspiracy idea that Devil-worshiping pedophiles management Hollywood and the Democratic Get together. And whilst QAnon adherents have sought workplace nationwide, the state of affairs in Georgia was alarming to consultants and advocates centered on election integrity within the period of baseless “Cease the Steal” panic about nonexistent voter fraud.
Individuals like Johnson “could also be extra keen to steal the following election in the event that they consider that the final election was stolen (it wasn’t),” Rick Hasen, an professional on election regulation on the College of California-Irvine, informed The Each day Beast in an e-mail. “Second, even when these conspiracists and QAnon adherents administer elections pretty, many individuals will reject election outcomes they report as a result of these directors have proven themselves to not be credible.”
Johnson, who's the CEO of a expertise firm that does IT work for the county, didn't reply to repeated requests for remark for this story.
Proof pointing to a weird fixation on QAnon is throughout Johnson’s Twitter timeline. On Sept. 23, 2020, he responded to a CBS Information piece about QAnon by writing, “You need to ask the president ‘Who's Q?’” In October 2020, Johnson tweeted at Dilbert creator Scott Adams and the now-suspended account of former Gen. Mike Flynn: “Hate to say it however a hell of lots of the data dropped by Q has turned out to be correct,” Johnson wrote.
That very same month, following a congressional decision condemning QAnon, Johnson speculated that by demanding a roll name vote, Democrats “wished the names of Q supporters” in Congress. Johnson has additionally posted a meme concerning the distinction between Antifa and QAnon, which broadly paints the 2 as evil and good, respectively.
In December 2020, Johnson once more tweeted at Adams concerning a declare that YouTube had banned election-fraud content material by saying that “a number of the Q websites have already got a category motion” lawsuit and speculating that a far-right YouTube community may “be part of” to struggle alleged censorship. On the ultimate day of the yr, Johnson tweeted at a right-wing radio host referencing discredited election conspiracist Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, asking if Pulitzer may “work his paper Q magic.” (Pulitzer has claimed he has proprietary expertise that may detect the presence of bamboo in paper, indicating that some mail-in ballots utilized in 2020 got here from China. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, has stated Pulitzer offered “no proof” of widespread voter fraud within the state..)
Johnson has additionally displayed gentle skepticism about Q, tweeting in December 2020, “Whether or not [Q is ] actual or not it’s preserving in any other case unproductive folks shifting largely in the identical course.”
However extra typically he has appeared to embrace the speculation. In January 2021, Johnson tweeted at a person who disparaged QAnon, writing, “Extra folks know they've been ripped off becusae [sic] of Q and anons than would w/o it.”
In Could 2021, Johnson tweeted merely, “We're all Q.”
Logan Pressure, a QAnon professional beforehand often called Travis View and host of the QAnon Nameless podcast, informed The Each day Beast that Johnson’s tweets concerning the conspiracy present a deep involvement in it.
Johnson “was deep into the QAnon group, knew the in-group language, and usually learn the Q Drops,” Pressure stated after reviewing Johnson’s tweets, including that the Republican election official has referenced Q drops from way back to 2018.
As chair of the elections board, Johnson has vital energy. He and the board can regulate and determine issues concerning public remark at board conferences, presumably “rising cases of far-right conspiracists” commenting at conferences, in keeping with Xakota Espinoza, a spokesperson for Truthful Struggle Motion, the voting rights advocacy group based by Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Espinoza stated that early-vote places, the variety of poll dropboxes, precinct adjustments and places, voter registration challenges, hiring and coaching of ballot staff, processing mail ballots and purposes, and certifying the county’s election outcomes all fall underneath the purview of the board.
Johnson’s beliefs in QAnon and different conspiracies have raised alarms with outdoors consultants and native voting rights advocates and Democrats. However they're a part of a sample of an more and more radicalized GOP that helps the Huge Lie and associated conspiracies.
Nonetheless, one in every of Johnson’s colleagues on the board expressed befuddlement at his obvious embrace of probably the most infamous conspiracy idea there may be.
“I assume he’s simply not who he offered himself to me to be,” Jim O’Brien, one of many two Democrats on the board, informed The Each day Beast.
Since not less than 2013, Johnson has been lively on Twitter, posting about native GOP occasions and tweeting at conservative politicians whereas mentioning Spalding County. However in 2020, like many Republicans within the county and nationwide, he turned obsessive about false claims of widespread voter fraud and mishandling of the election.
Johnson’s tweets cowl myriad election conspiracies, from occasions that occurred in different states to his personal false claims of fraud in his hometown, Griffin. A bit greater than every week after the 2020 election, Johnson tweeted a few weird post-election incident that occurred wherein native Republicans rooted by way of a dumpster on the county elections workplace seeking proof of discarded ballots. Johnson tweeted at disgraced Trump lawyer L. Lin Wooden that day, saying he had “the supply video for ballots discovered within the dumpster in Spalding County!”
When regulation enforcement arrived to gather this alleged proof, they decided the envelopes didn't really comprise any ballots, in keeping with the responding company, the Spalding County Sheriff’s Workplace, which didn't reply to questions concerning the incident.
No member of the election board or the Spalding County Board of Commissioners responded to requests for remark. Nor did the Spalding County GOP, which appointed Johnson to the elections board, or the Georgia Republican Get together.
In February 2021, Johnson tweeted “Election fraud will not be a fable” with the #ItalyGate hashtag, referencing a debunked conspiracy idea that originated from an obscure Florida group purporting votes had been modified by Italian safety officers. Johnson has additionally claimed Raffensberger "knowingly" lied when he stated there was no widespread voter fraud within the 2020 election.
“What I’m discovering out is there’s an entire different facet to him that I don’t know,” O’Brien, the Spalding County Democrat, informed The Each day Beast.
Dr. Yoshunda Jones, an area voting rights advocate and enterprise marketing consultant in Griffin, stated Johnson’s excessive beliefs are literally a characteristic, and never a bug, for a lot of Republicans within the space.
“Lots of them very a lot do really feel the identical method that he does,” Jones informed The Each day Beast. “They’re all principally Huge Lie supporters; lots of them are concerned with QAnon as effectively.”
O’Brien stated there isn't any apparent authorized recourse for eradicating a possible QAnon supporter from the elections board. As a substitute, O’Brien merely exhibits as much as election board conferences, outnumbered.
“The personal me says, ‘No he shouldn’t be in that place.’The general public me is — I plan to thwart him the most effective that I can,” O’Brien stated of Johnson. “And once I go searching, I see lots of Republican legislators which might be holding down their positions and so they’re conspiracy theorists, too.”