AMNA NAWAZ: The Trump administration has stepped up efforts to challenge the integrity of U.S.

elections and assert greater control over how they're conducted.

Georgia has been at the center of that debate ever since President Trump's false claims about the state's role in the 2020 election.

In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, Liz Landers looks at how Georgia election officials are working to restore public confidence in the voting process.

LIZ LANDERS: In a small warehouse in Paulding, Georgia, about an hour West of Atlanta, workers are unpacking voting machines and running tests for logic and accuracy, part of a protocol taking place statewide as Georgia prepares for the midterm elections next month.

This is the Paulding County election headquarters.

Everything here is meticulously organized to send out to all of their polling locations, including these ballot scanners.

These are from Dominion Voting Systems, and each of these is secured and locked in six different places to ensure that there is no tampering with this election equipment.

After the 2020 election spawned conspiracies about procedures and vote totals, Georgia election officials began inviting the press and public into their election offices to observe the checks and balances in action.

WOMAN: So, once we get all the selections, we will print our ballot.

Like I said, we do this for every single race, every single candidate, every single piece of equipment, and every single ballot.

LIZ LANDERS: Lacy Dunn is the assistant elections director in Paulding County.

LACY DUNN, Assistant Elections Director, Paulding County, Georgia: We know that Georgia's -- it's in the news.

And so we are very prepared.

LIZ LANDERS: Overseeing it all is Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican secretary of state for the past eight years.

How much contact do you have with the local election officials here in Georgia?

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R), Georgia Secretary of State: Our team has daily contact.

We have 159 counties.

It gets down to training and then also oversight, and then just really having those constant communications.

LIZ LANDERS: He became a household name for refusing to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: So, look, all I want to do is this.

I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

LIZ LANDERS: In January of this year, FBI agents raided the Fulton County election headquarters, seizing hundreds of boxes of 2020 election material.

The director of national intelligence was even present.

DONALD TRUMP: They have the ballots.

FBI came in and raided.

They found plenty of stuff, and now they have the ballots.

LIZ LANDERS: Almost nine months after that unprecedented seizure of election material, the FBI has yet to bring charges.

But President Trump has long seen Georgia as central to his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which has created doubt in some voters' minds here.

MAN: Do I think there may have been some issue in 2020?

Absolutely.

You know, I think about the 2020 election, which I really think was rigged.

MAN: I'm going to be optimistic, and I'm going to feel like this time around my vote will be counted.

LIZ LANDERS: Now, in the last election that he will oversee, Raffensperger is pushing back on the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to take more control of the election process.

Georgia, like 30 other states, refused to turn over sensitive voter information to the Department of Justice.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER: I provided the federal authorities everything we could by state law.

And state law says you cannot hand out the information that they wanted.

What they wanted was Social Security numbers, date of birth, full date of birth.

And that is PII, your personal identifying information.

And that's just something by state law we were not allowed to do.

And so we -- that was where we placed the guardrail on that.

LIZ LANDERS: Georgia already requires voter I.D., and Raffensperger touts a recent audit of the voter rolls in that state that found it was 99.8 percent accurate.

You don't have problems with widespread noncitizens on the voter rolls here.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER: Yes.

We have been diligent for years.

We understand how that's a real hot button for all voters, both political sides.

So we check it.

We verify it.

We do the hard work up front.

LIZ LANDERS: That's something that the president has been pushing a lot, that there are allegedly all these noncitizens voting throughout the United States.

What's your message to him on that?

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER: Well, my message is to everyone every state should be doing citizenship audits.

Everyone should be working as hard as we do.

LIZ LANDERS: But it hasn't all gone smoothly for Georgia.

SALLEIGH GRUBBS, Georgia State Election Board: What I'm telling you is, the public deserves better than this.

LIZ LANDERS: The secretary of state's office has clashed in recent years with the Georgia State Election Board, which has limited power, but a loud microphone.

Salleigh Grubbs, the former chair of the Cobb County Republican Party, was appointed to the board late last year by the Republican lieutenant governor.

She still has questions about neighboring Fulton County's role in the 2020 election.

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: Clearly, in Fulton County, there was double counting, sometimes I believe triple counting in Fulton County during the 2020 election.

LIZ LANDERS: How do you know that?

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: Well, they admitted it.

They admitted it in a State Election Board meeting.

So there's really no question that it happened.

It's just, I believe, a question of to what extent.

LIZ LANDERS: When they said that, didn't they say that it was an error that they had double or triple counted?

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: I mean, does it really matter whether it was an error or not?

LIZ LANDERS: While a state investigation of Fulton County's 2020 results did find some double counting of ballots during a recount, the review said that this was due to human error, not intentional misconduct, and said the errors were not enough to alter any election results.

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: We have a secretary of state who has not done his job to secure our election system.

LIZ LANDERS: The latest flash point between the board and the secretary's office, the state's touch screen machines made by Dominion Voting Systems, which print voters' selections on paper ballots with Q.R.

codes that are scanned by tabulators.

The board wants Georgia to help the Justice Department investigate the machines.

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: It's the equipment that's not trustworthy.

I mean, we are voting on equipment that has been compromised.

That system has been distributed across the country.

LIZ LANDERS: You mean the Dominion Voting System?

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: The Dominion Voting System.

The question is how to mitigate those vulnerabilities.

And I don't believe that those things are happening.

LIZ LANDERS: Raffensperger's office says the machines are secure and election officials have processes to ensure ballot secrecy.

Georgia plans to replace the aging Dominion machines by 2028.

In a statement to "News Hour," Dominion Voting Systems, now known as Liberty Vote, said in part -- quote -- "Years of scrutiny have consistently affirmed the accuracy, security and reliability of our voting systems."

Grubbs is also concerned about noncitizens voting despite the very few instances of noncitizens on voter rolls out of the state's nearly eight million registered voters.

How much time and energy should the federal government and the local government be spending on this when it won't actually change the outcome of elections here?

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: The problem is, is that we have a lot of races that are decided by one vote.

And if I vote legally and you vote illegally, and you're not a citizen, you have disenfranchised my vote.

You have suppressed my vote.

Am I for federalization of elections?

Absolutely not.

Am I for the federal government stepping in?

I am for the states doing a good job at administering elections.

I am for the states being transparent.

LIZ LANDERS: Despite her concerns, Grubbs says she will accept the results of next month's election.

SALLEIGH GRUBBS: I accept all the election results, but that's where having verified elections is so important.

If there's an issue, it needs to be investigated.

LIZ LANDERS: And that is one thing she and Brad Raffensperger can agree on.

Raffensperger wants his office to project timeliness and accuracy so that all Georgians are confident in the election results.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Liz Landers in Paulding County, Georgia.