Going back all the way to Max Cleland’s defeat in 2002, I’ve been convinced that Georgia Republicans run the dirtiest elections in the country. Yet, I think 2018 took the cake:

It was a stunning accusation: Two days before the 2018 election for Georgia governor, Republican Brian Kemp used his power as secretary of state to open an investigation into what he called a “failed hacking attempt” of voter registration systems involving the Democratic Party.

But newly released case files from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reveal that there was no such hacking attempt.The evidence from the closed investigation indicates that Kemp’s office mistook planned security tests and a warning about potential election security holes for malicious hacking.Kemp then wrongly accused his political opponents just before Election Day — a high-profile salvo that drew national media attention in one of the most closely watched races of 2018.“The investigation by the GBI revealed no evidence of damage to (the secretary of state’s office’s) network or computers, and no evidence of theft, damage, or loss of data,” according to a March 2 memo from a senior assistant attorney general recommending that the case be closed.

As Secretary of State, Brian Kemp purged over 600,000 people off the voting rolls in 2017 and then allowed a backlog of 50,000 voter registration applications to go unprocessed before the election while wrongly denying 300,000 duly registered people their right to vote. And he still barely won.

Georgia should be very competitive in 2020, with Biden polling even or ahead is some recent polls and two competitive Senate races on tap. But I know it won’t be a fair fight with Governor Kemp overseeing the process.