ATLANTA (CN) — Less than a month before early voting begins, the Georgia State Election Board on Friday was considering multiple new changes to how the Peach State conducts elections, ultimately adopting a proposal to require the hand-counting of ballots.
With a new Trump-backed majority, the board voted 3-2 to approve the proposal, which mandates the hand-counting of ballots to ensure they match numbers recorded by voting machines. The new rule was proposed by Sharlene Alexander, Republican member of the Fayette County Board of Elections.
The election rule change is just the latest in recent months, after a right-wing majority took control of the board in May.
Such changes have drawn controversy due to Georgia’s recent electoral history: Although President Joe Biden carried the Peach State by fewer than 12,000 votes during the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump has continued to falsely insist that he won here.
The three members who voted to approve the rule — Janelle King, Rick Jeffares and Janice Johnston — were called out by name by Trump during a campaign rally in Atlanta. The former president described them as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory,” spurring concerns from election integrity organizations over their impartiality and motivations.
Defending the change, Johnston said that many other states hand count their ballots. She noted that Georgia already requires such hand counts in the event of an audit.
Sarah Ghazal, the only Democrat on the panel, voted against the proposal, as did its nonpartisan chairman John Fervier.
“The overwhelming number of election officials that have contacted me have opposed of this,” Fervier said.
The chairman said it was too close to an election to approve new rules. The change could take effect as soon as Oct. 14 — the day before the start of early voting.
“Most importantly, I believe that this is not supported at all in statue.” Fervier said. “This board is an administrative body, not a legislative body,”
“If this board votes to implement this rule, we put ourselves in legal jeopardy,” he added. “I think we should send a proposal to the legislature and ask them to enact this.” Fervier also noted the board had received guidance from the offices of both the Georgia secretary of state and the attorney general, informing them the new rulemaking is unlawful and undermines key provisions of Georgia’s Election Integrity Act.
King criticized Fervier’s comments, saying he was encouraging lawsuits. The board is already facing legal challenges after passing a rule earlier this year that could allow counties to delay certification of results.
“I would rather wait another hour, as a voter, to ensure the count is accurate,” King said of the new rule. “I think what we’re doing is creating more stability in the election process.”
During more than an hour of public comments, several county election directors and workers urged the board to not adopt any new election changes this close to November elections. They expressed concerns that the last-minute changes would burden poll workers and cause delays.
Several commenters also pointed to federal court precedent recommending a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections, during which it is widely considered inappropriate to change election rules because of the risk of confusion and error.
Michael Beach, who said he’d worked as an assistant poll manager in DeKalb County for almost three years, called the proposed hand-count rule unnecessary. He said the board should have raised the issue earlier and based decisions on more factual evidence.
“We should be using accurate data to find real areas of improvement,” Beach said.
Beach and other state election workers also expressed concerns that hand-counting ballots at the end of election day — in addition to the customary machine count — would introduce a larger risk of human errors.
Kristen Nabers, Georgia State Director of All Voting is Local, a nonpartisan voting rights advocacy group, said she has watched multiple counties already conduct full hand counts of ballots. It was a tedious process that often leads to errors that then require additional hand-counts, she said.
“None of the errors I’ve ever witnessed were from machine problems,” Nabers said. “In every single case, it has been a human error.”
Typically, Georgia’s ballots are counted by machine. In the event of a recount or audit, paper ballot printouts serve as a backup to the electronically scanned ballots.
The hand-count requirement was one of 11 proposals expected to be voted on on Friday.
All the proposed changes have come from right-wing activists, voters and local election board members, who argue changes are necessary to make state elections more secure and transparent. At press time, the meeting was still ongoing.
Those include measures that would require lists of registered voters to be publicly posted before early voting begins, a daily reporting system for counties to publicize details of which voters have cast early and absentee ballots and greater access for poll watchers in election tabulation areas.
Another proposal would require absentee and emergency ballots — which are currently identical — to be visually different from each other. Yet another would require absentee ballot tracking. Ballots have already been printed, and the state currently plans to start mailing absentee ballots on Oct. 7. Georgia voters can track absentee ballots through a text messaging and email service called BallotTrax that notifies them when their ballots are mailed and received.