The chair of Georgia's State Election Board stunned observers over the weekend by admitting he has no control over his own executive director, whose letters asking the Trump administration to intervene in the state's elections, he says, blew past anything the board signed off on.
"We have no control over our executive director, and he does whatever the hell he wants to," board chair John Fervier told Votebeat. Asked whether that was an ongoing problem, Fervier replied, "You have no idea."
Executive director James Mills signed the letters and sent them Wednesday to Attorney General Todd Blanche, Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Mills asked the Justice Department to impose new security measures before the midterms and give Georgia a six-month deadline to stop using QR codes to count ballots, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. He also pressed federal officials to force a statewide software update before November, which state election officials say can't be done in time. Early in-person voting begins Oct. 13.
The board voted 3-2 on Sept. 28 to authorize Mills to seek federal help, over Fervier's objection, and gave him wide latitude to take steps he deemed "necessary" or "desirable." The resolution also required him to keep the board copied. Fervier said the letters "far exceeded" what members approved and called them "a political hit piece against our secretary of state."
Even a supporter of the resolution is fuming. Salleigh Grubbs, who is also vice chair of the Georgia Republican Party, said she asked Mills by email that same day to share a draft with the board first. He never replied, she said, and she learned the letters had gone out Thursday morning "with everybody else."
"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."
Mills did not respond to Votebeat's requests for comment.
The letters also asked Blanche to hold Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger accountable for allegedly altering or withholding election records. Raffensperger, a Republican, lost his bid for governor in the May GOP primary and leaves office in January. "People who are serious about election security don't inject chaos in the 11th hour," his spokesperson told Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Mills, a former Republican state legislator hired in 2025, has feuded with Fervier for months over how far his authority reaches, at one point demanding during a public meeting that the chair "be a man," Votebeat reported.
The fight comes as federal agencies already have Georgia's elections under a microscope, including the FBI's January raid on Fulton County's election hub. An MS NOW opinion piece argued that if Blanche acts on Mills' request, he would go from defending Trump's past election conduct to joining a new fight over Georgia's voting system. The DOJ has not said whether it will act.
