'Wrong on both fronts': Georgia's Raffensperger slapped down for dismissing attempts to keep Trump off the ballot

Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger could block Donald Trump from his state's ballot, according to a new analysis, but he's simply choosing not to do so.

The state's top election official published a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday stating that he "can't keep Trump off the ballot," but MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown argued that Georgia law gives Raffensperger both the power and the responsibility to remove the former president as a primary candidate.

"Despite that headline, the Republican’s piece is more about how he shouldn’t block Trump and less about whether he could," Brown wrote. "By arguing that he shouldn’t and can’t, Raffensperger’s wrong on both fronts. Under Georgia law, he doesn’t just have the power to keep Trump off the ballot — he has the responsibility to do so."

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He cites attempts to block Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) from the 2022 ballot, saying both challenges failed, but Brown said a federal appeals court found after he lost his primary that Cawthorn could have been barred from office, while an administrative law judge found that Greene's pro-insurrection sentiments were expressed before she had sworn her oath of office, so Raffensperger kept her on the ballot.

"But a look at Georgia election law shows it didn’t have to be that way," Brown wrote. "Crucially, the law states that candidates who have been named by Georgia political parties or who have submitted their names for candidacy 'shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.' That clearly includes the provisions of the disqualification clause, which was rightly considered the supreme law of the land in the federal court’s Greene decision."

"The question, then, is whether Raffensperger wants to act in the best interests of his constituents," Brown added. "Georgia’s voters entrusted him with that power, and no matter how much he tries to hand that power back, the law recognizes that power as his."