Pro-Trump Georgia Election Board Makes Last-Minute Change

A 3-2 Republican majority on Georgia’s State Election Board voted Friday to require local election offices to hand count the state’s millions of ballots, inviting chaos as experts warned the task would prove impossible in the state’s largest counties, which lean Democratic.

The rule was just the latest in a string of partisan votes from the board, members of which Donald Trump praised by name at a rally in Georgia last month. A few weeks ago, the board empowered county election officials — many of whom have challenged election results in the past — to personally investigate election results and demand reams of election-related documentation, potentially delaying the certification of the state’s results.

The board was made more partisan as part of a Trumpian election overhaul bill passed in 2021 after Trump lost the state in the 2020 presidential election.

Friday’s rule requires a hand count of all ballots by individual poll managers and two “sworn poll officers.” If there are any inconsistencies, including between the hand counts and ballot tabulators, they must be resolved. The rule will disproportionately affect Georgia’s largest counties, which lean blue and were key to President Joe Biden’s narrow win in the state in 2020. Nearly 5 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

The state’s Republican attorney general’s office advised the board that the change — one of several rules under consideration Friday — was likely unlawful, and it will likely face a challenge in court. The previous rule changes regarding the certification of election results and access to election documentation are currently facing a suit from Georgia Democrats.

“These proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do,” a senior attorney in Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office wrote.

The new rule increases the likelihood that the certification of election results will be delayed in Georgia. And if the state happens to end up determining the winner of the 2024 election — which isn’t unlikely — such a delay could lay the groundwork for a broader effort to determine the presidency through a legal or political fight, or a 2020-style election subversion campaign.

There are already measures in place in Georgia and elsewhere to certify that the correct number of ballots have been tallied in a given precinct — just as there are already avenues for candidates who suspect election fraud to challenge results in court. Critics say giving additional responsibilities to local election officials just six weeks before Election Day is a recipe for disrupting the election and sowing doubts about the results.

Studies (and real-world examples) have consistently found that hand counts of ballots are significantly less accurate than machine counts, but Republicans in several states have campaigned to ban machines or add hand-counting requirements in the wake of Trump and his allies’ lies that the machines were used to rig the 2020 election.

The rule passed Friday in Georgia states that “the process must be completed within the designated county certification period,” which occurs a week after Election Day. Speakers in opposition to Friday’s rule warned that it would be used to challenge the legitimacy of election results.

“People doing a hand count are going to make mistakes, which can then be exploited to spread lies and sow further distrust in our elections and our election officials,” said Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director of All Voting is Local, a nonpartisan voting rights organization.

Others were simply concerned that local officials had no time to prepare for the changes.

“Military ballots have already been issued,” Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in south Georgia’s Irwin County, said Friday, The Washington Post reported. “The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”

Joseph Kirk, elections chief in Bartow County, previously told the paper the rule would “do nothing more than provide exhausted patriots with an opportunity to undermine public confidence through an honest mistake.”

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, a nonpartisan group whose members include election officials across the state, wrote in opposition to the hand count rule ahead of Friday’s meeting, citing its “potential to delay results; set fatigued employees up for failure; and undermine the very confidence the rule’s author claims to seek.”

The association’s president separately said members were “gravely concerned” about last-minute changes to the election rules, saying they could “ultimately lead to errors or delays in voting, which is the last thing anyone wants.”

And Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, warned Thursday that “activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures outside of the legislative process undermine voter confidence and burden election workers.”

Georgia was one of several states whose 2020 results Republicans challenged in an effort to overturn the election outcome and reverse Biden’s win; Trump faces several felony counts in Georgia and federally for his efforts to overturn those results, as do several Republicans in Georgia.