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Last week, the Georgia State Election Board sent letters to the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security asking the Trump administration to order major changes to the state’s voting equipment just weeks before the midterm election.
But the board’s chair says its members did not authorize the letters, review them in advance, or know they were being sent.
While the letters have been widely understood as an outgrowth of a Sept. 28 resolution authorizing Executive Director James Mills to seek federal assistance over concerns about Georgia’s voting system, Chair John Fervier told Votebeat that Mills drafted and sent the letters on his own and that they went well beyond what the board had approved in a 3-2 vote two days earlier.
“We have no control over our executive director, and he does whatever the hell he wants to,” Fervier said.
Asked whether that was an ongoing problem, Fervier said, “You have no idea.”
Mills did not respond to a Saturday email or a Sunday voicemail requesting comment.
The episode is the latest escalation in a long-running power struggle over the State Election Board. Since Mills was hired in 2025, he and Fervier have repeatedly clashed over how much authority the executive director can exercise without the chair’s involvement.
Fervier’s account was confirmed by Salleigh Grubbs, the vice chair of the Georgia Republican Party and one of the three members who voted for the resolution, who has generally aligned with the board’s conservative majority.
Grubbs told Votebeat that within hours of the Sept. 28 meeting, she emailed Mills asking him to send the proposed letter to board members before it went out. Democratic member Sara Tindall Ghazal replied to the message, seconding the request. Grubbs said Mills never responded, and she learned of the letters Thursday morning “with everybody else.”
“I really didn’t know it was going to be like, ‘Whoosh!’ and it’s done,” she said.
The resolution also gave Mills broad discretion in carrying out its directives. But Fervier — one of two members who voted against the resolution — said the letters “far exceeded” what the board actually approved. Grubbs agreed.
The resolution urged the Georgia secretary of state to begin implementing recommended software updates, called for forensic copies of certain election-system hard drives before any update, authorized Mills to seek federal assistance concerning the failure to update the software, and directed him to assist existing federal inquiries into QR-code tabulation and voter-data sharing.
Mills’ letters turned these into far more aggressive demands. Mills asked the Justice Department to compel state and county officials to install specific newer software before the November election. The letter also asked the Justice Department to prohibit QR-code-based tabulation entirely and impose a binding six-month deadline for Georgia to move away from it.
The controversy over QR codes dates to the rollout of Georgia’s current voting system in 2020. The state’s touchscreen voting machines print out a paper ballot that lists the voter’s choices but also encodes them in a QR code, which is what’s used in the actual tabulation. Critics have long argued that such a system is not directly verifiable by voters. State officials have defended the system as secure and auditable — and audits show the system tabulates ballots as expected — but critics say hand-marked paper ballots or other changes would improve security and trust.
Grubbs said her vote for the resolution wasn’t meant to authorize the demands in the letters. “I know we don’t have time to do those kinds of updates before November,” she said.
The letters also made allegations against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, that do not appear in the resolution. They say he “appears to have misled the legislature and the public” about the cost and feasibility of addressing problems with the voting system. They also ask the Justice Department to investigate the alleged alteration, destruction, or withholding of ballot images, cast-vote records, and voter rolls by Raffensperger’s office. Mills also asked federal officials to hold Raffensperger or other responsible officials accountable under federal law.
A spokesperson for Raffensperger’s office has shrugged off the request, telling Georgia Public Broadcasting, “People who are serious about election security don’t inject chaos in the 11th hour.”
Fervier, an appointee of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp who has served on the board for three years, said he views the letters as “a political hit piece against our secretary of state” and an attempt to sow “chaos and confusion” in this year’s midterms.
Federal agencies are already actively scrutinizing Georgia’s elections
Neither the Department of Justice nor the Department of Homeland Security has publicly indicated whether it intends to act on Mills’ requests.
A Homeland Security spokesperson told Votebeat that the agency “responds to official correspondence through official channels” and “is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.” The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
The letters arrive, however, amid several other ongoing election-related federal actions in Georgia. The Justice Department has been battling Raffensperger over access to the state’s unredacted voter roll, while the FBI is conducting a separate criminal investigation into Fulton County’s 2020 election records after agents seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other materials in January. Homeland Security has also sought Georgia voter records in immigration-related investigations.
The letters themselves are printed on State Election Board letterhead and cite the Sept. 28 resolution as the basis for their requests. They ask federal officials for “prompt consideration” of a series of actions involving Georgia’s voting system, election records, and voter-registration data.
The resolution authorized Mills to seek help from the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and “any quarter” and to take any action he considered “necessary” or “desirable” to advance the resolution’s goals. But that discretion was tied to carrying out the resolution itself, and Mills was required to immediately copy the board on communications related to that work, according to the resolution.
Fervier said the new demands and allegations Mills added to the letters he drafted and sent without copying the board are evidence that he went beyond the authority he was given.
Grubbs also believes Mills exceeded his authority. “In private enterprise, if I told an employee I wanted to see something before it goes and he did this, we’d be having a very different conversation,” Grubbs said. “I thought we were all on the same team.”
A long-running fight over Mills’ authority
Mills, a former Republican state legislator and longtime member of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, has become a polarizing figure in Georgia election administration in the short time since his appointment.
Conservative activists have praised him as an aggressive advocate willing to pursue questions about voting systems, voter rolls, and the 2020 election that they believe other officials have ignored. His critics — a broad group including voting-rights groups and officials in the secretary of state’s office — have cast him as a destabilizing force whose actions inject politics and confusion into election administration. The divide has surfaced repeatedly in fights over Fulton County’s 2020 records, voter-roll investigations, and the board’s internal management.
At an August 2025 hearing of a Georgia House blue-ribbon committee held only three months after Mills took over as executive director, Mills openly attacked the officials overseeing him. He accused Fervier of excluding members from discussions with the secretary of state’s office, disregarding the wishes of the board majority, and preventing even “simple changes” from being made, telling lawmakers he had “never served under a more dysfunctional, dishonest chairman.”
Mills also urged lawmakers to watch an earlier board meeting as evidence of Fervier’s dishonesty. The confrontation was not isolated: Weeks later, Mills challenged Fervier during a public board meeting to “be a man” and surrender control over posting meeting notices, prompting Fervier to tell him to stop questioning his manhood.
The disputes have ranged from control over staffing and meeting logistics to correspondence sent before formal board approval. Earlier this year, for example, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that then-board member Janice Johnston directed Mills to send letters to Fulton County before the board had voted to authorize them.
The board’s majority has also repeatedly delegated more operational authority to Mills, saying the changes were needed to ensure the majority’s decisions were carried out rather than blocked by Fervier, deepening the divide.
Firing Mills would require votes from three board members, and it is not clear whether that support exists. Grubbs said the letters have troubled her more deeply than her other frustrations with Mills, which she said extend beyond this incident.
“I will make inquiries and I don’t always get a response,” she said, adding that she does not find him timely or responsive. “I would have thought he would have been more willing to work with me.”
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
