Election protection worker in Georgia quits job to run against Republican fake elector

23 March 2024

A 24-year-old federal cybersecurity employee in Georgia is now throwing his hat in the ring for a state senate seat in the Peach State. Ashwin Ramaswami is seeking to oust a Republican legislator who is one of former President Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election interference RICO case.

NBC News reported that Ramswami — who worked for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) until recently — is officially running against Georgia state senator Shawn Still. The GOP lawmaker was indicted last year by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis along with Trump and more than a dozen others. Still was one of several Republicans who signed paperwork at a December 14, 2020 meeting falsely stating he was one of Georgia's 16 presidential electors.

"David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chair, ran the meeting and certified himself as a state elector, as did the state GOP’s finance Chairman Shawn Still, Coffee County Republicans’ Chairwoman Cathy Latham and others," the Washington Post reported at the time. "Involvement in the alternate electors scheme resulted in a range of charges, including making false statements, forgery and impersonating a public officer."

Ramaswami, a graduate of Stanford University currently enrolled in law school courses at Georgetown University, said that while he found meaning in his work helping local election officials protect their websites from cyberattacks, he viewed Still as an even greater threat to democracy given his attempt to overturn election results.

"What I realized is cybersecurity is really important, and we need to continue doing it, but the biggest threat to our election security — it’s not just hackers hacking into our systems. It’s politicians falsely claiming that the election is rigged when it’s not," Ramaswami told NBC.

If he wins in November, Ramaswami would be the youngest state senator in the Georgia legislature, and possibly the youngest Indian American state lawmaker in the US, just reaching the required minimum age of 25 prior to Election Day. And because he's the only Democratic candidate on the ballot, Ramaswami is focusing his efforts on November. NBC reported that he has raised a whopping $185,000 for his campaign so far, with $50,000 of that coming from his own pocket.

"We have too much work to do to be distracted by these election deniers and partisan extremists standing in the way of all the progress we could be making," Ramaswami said in a campaign video.

The 24-year-old also has the backing of the Leaders We Deserve political action committee, which was launched by Parkland, Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg. The PAC is known for backing Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida), who became the first Gen Z member of Congress after winning his election in 2022.

"We thought it was just that he was a great candidate with an amazing story," Hogg said.

As part of his role participating in the December 14 "fake elector" meeting, Sen. Still faces seven felony counts. In addition to the primary racketeering charge, Still is also defending himself from multiple felony charges of impersonating a public officer, forgery, and attempting to file false documents.

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