Thread by @ericgeller

Georgia SoS Brad Raffensperger has adopted a familiar playbook for dealing with election security criticism: ignore experts, attack critics, and dismiss facts.

My new story about how he's following in Brian Kemp's footsteps and infuriating activists: subscriber.politicopro.com/cybersecurity/…

Raffensperger says people warning against ballot-marking devices are "outside of the mainstream."

That would include @theNASEM and virtually everyone with significant voting security expertise.

To justify BMDs, Raffensperger released a memo saying paper ballots would cost significantly more (207-224m over 10 years) than BMDs (150m).

It used an inflated per-ballot price & flawed methodology (compared purchase price of BMDs to purchase AND admin price of paper ballots).

He later told @gpbnews that the true total costs were actually very similar.

He said he picked BMDs because local election officials overwhelmingly prefer them.

They're also more familiar to voters in a state that already uses touchscreen voting machines.

When FreedomWorks exec @pye co-signed a letter to state lawmakers about the memo's flaws, Raffensperger's deputy, Jordan Fuchs, attacked him as a Washington outsider unfamiliar with how GA works.

He's a GA native who still lives there.

Fuchs posted her response on Facebook.

When people in the comments started questioning her choice to call a native Georgian an outsider, she argued back, stunning observers.

We've got screenshots in our story.

Raffensperger's approach is a common one in red states: The real experts are the people on the ground, not the ivory-tower eggheads, and we don't want Washington telling us how to run our elections.

It's probably a winning strategy for him.

There's more in our story, including the problem with the poll that Raffensperger cites to support BMDs.

Read on here: subscriber.politicopro.com/cybersecurity/…