Head of a local elections board in Georgia is a QAnon-obsessed, Big Lie conspiracy theorist
If you think not signing the landmark Voting Rights Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was just another political debate, you’re dead wrong. Not having those voting bills in place means that an anti-vaxxer, Big Lie spreading, QAnon conspiracist Republican can take the helm of an election board and wreak havoc on local voters.
Last year, Ben Johnson was appointed to head the five-member Spalding County, Georgia Board of Elections and Registration. He and his fellow members have the power to restrict or expand access to voting, investigate claims of voter fraud, call for audits and certify election results. And what’s most frightening about Johnson isn’t simply that he’s part of a scheme that has successfully replaced Black members of local boards with conservative MAGA-loving white men in a 35% Black county, but that he’s a devout QAnoner and Big Lie conspiracy theorist.
These are elections we’re talking about!
As part of their many responsibilities, election boards handle local voter registration programs, train election judges, select polling places, get ballots printed, oversee Election Day activities, and supervise the vote count at the local level. Under Johnson, the board has already eliminated early morning Sunday voting, as this year’s midterms loom large.
A year ago, the five-member Spalding County election board comprised three Black women and a Black elections supervisor. Today, all three of the women have been replaced by white Republicans and Johnson—a former official of the county Republican party.
After examining Johnson’s Twitter feed, Logan Strain, a QAnon expert previously known as Travis View and host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, told The Daily Beast it was obvious Johnson “was deep into the QAnon community, knew the in-group language, and regularly read the Q Drops,” adding that the Johnson’s Q references date back to 2018.
But, it’s not just Q conspiracies that are so troubling. Johnson appears to be equally obsessed with the Big Lie.
About a week after the 2020 election, Johnson turned to social media claiming that ballots for Donald Trump had been uncovered in a dumpster in Spalding Couty.
Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix released a statement almost immediately dismissing the rumors. In fact, all the envelopes were empty.
“There has been a great deal of bad information, misinformation, rumor, and gossip over the chain of events that occurred last night at the Spalding County Elections Office,” Dix said in his statement.
But, that didn’t stop Johnson. On Feb. 13, he tweeted:
— Ben M Johnson (@BeniclesMF) February 13, 2021
People like Johnson “may be more willing to steal the next election if they believe that the last election was stolen (it wasn’t),” Rick Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California-Irvine, told The Daily Beast. “Second, even if these conspiracists and QAnon adherents administer elections fairly, many people will reject election results they report because these administrators have shown themselves not to be credible.”
The sad thing is, Johnson isn’t alone.
Dr. Yoshunda Jones, a local voting rights advocate and business consultant, told Daily Beast that many of the board members have similar beliefs to Johnson’s.
”A lot of them very much do feel the same way that he does,” Jones said. “They’re all mostly Big Lie supporters; a lot of them are involved with QAnon as well.”