Georgia GOP secretary of state candidate says he’d make voters’ private information public

By Brentin Mock

PERRY, GA - SEPTEMBER 25: Vernon Jones, Georgia gubernatorial candidate, speaks to a crowd at a rally featuring former US President Donald Trump on September 25, 2021 in Perry, Georgia. Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, Georgia Secretary of State candidate Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), and Georgia Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Burt Jones (R-GA) also appeared as guests at the rally. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Vernon Jones, the MAGA-aligned election denier currently in the runoff to become Georgia’s GOP nominee for secretary of state, said that he was willing to publicize voters’ personal information and make them available to those involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.  

Jones was responding on X to David Shafer, the former Georgia Republican Party chairman who conspired with Trump in 2020 to de-certify the state’s election results. Shafer was discussing his efforts to prove that dead people voted in that election.

“The President and I alleged in our lawsuit contesting the 2020 election that approximately 5,000 votes had been cast in the names of voters for whom there was on file a death certificate that matched the name and year of birth of the voter,” wrote Shafer.  “We needed the full birth dates to quantify the exact number of dead people voting.”

Replying to Shafer’s complaint in the post that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) refused to hand the full birthdates over, Jones wrote: “When I become SOS, @realDonaldTrump nor you, or the voters in Georgia will have that problem. I’ll direct staff to make it available my first day in office.”

Jones, a former Democrat, has publicly supported those who’ve falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud tainted the 2020 election. Several investigations and audits of the election have consistently concluded that allegations of dead people and non-citizens illegally voting have no basis in reality.

It is unlawful in Georgia for state election officials to make certain personal voter identifier information – including birth month and day – public or available to anyone, including the president. 

Trump’s U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has tried to retrieve such information from virtually every state in the country,  in efforts to justify its false voter fraud claims and to wrest control of elections from the states. 

In Georgia, the DOJ sought voters birth dates, social security numbers and driver’s license information last year to share with a third party, which Raffensperger refused to hand over. A federal court blocked the federal agency from obtaining voters’ private details earlier this year, in a case where the DOJ sued for access to it.

However, Jones has indicated that as the state’s chief elections officer, he would be far more willing to cooperate with the Trump administration on such demands – as has his challenger in the runoff state Rep. Tim Fleming ( R), who is also a 2020 election denier.