County officials across Georgia are sounding the alarm about a series of State Election Board rule changes that they say could create chaos during the process of certifying presidential election results in November.
Georgia is one of seven swing states expected to determine the outcome of the Nov. 5 general election matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Critics contend that the State Election Board rule changes, driven by Trump-aligned Republicans, put an unreasonable strain on county election staffers, especially in more-populous counties like those in the metro Atlanta region, where a disproportionate share of the state’s Black and Democratic voters live.
That could lead to delays in the certification process and less confidence in the outcome of the election in Georgia, where the last presidential matchup was decided by less than 12,000 votes.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials (GAVREO) sent a letter to members of the State Election Board on Tuesday asking them to stop changing rules with less than three months until the election.
“Any last-minute changes to the rules risk undermining the public’s trust in the electoral process and place undue pressure on the individuals responsible for managing the polls and administering the election,” GAVREO President W. Travis Doss Jr. wrote in his letter to the board.
Counting ballots by hand?
The request came a day after the State Election Board voted 3-2 in favor of advancing a new rule requiring county election officials to create lists of voters who cast ballots in future elections and ensure the number of voters on those lists matches the number of submitted ballots.
The rule isn’t due to be finalized until the board’s next meeting on Sept. 20, or 30 days from when the secretary of state’s office posts the rule online for public viewing.
The rule also requires election staffers to count ballots submitted in-person on Election Day by hand instead of relying solely on voting machine tabulations. The contents of ballot scanners with 750 ballots or less must be hand-counted and reported to the secretary of state’s office by 11:59 p.m. on Election Day, according to State Election Board member Janelle King. She added that the board amended its rule on Monday to give more populous counties, like Fulton County, additional time to hand-count their ballots.
Earlier this month, the board approved a rule allowing county election board members to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” prior to certifying election results if there are concerns about voter fraud or other related issues.
Critics contend the reasonable inquiry rule gives partisan county election board members a pretext to challenge election results and delay their certification. Trump and his supporters in the state have been raising baseless concerns about widespread voter fraud since the 2020 presidential election.
King, a Republican who is also the only Black member of the State Election Board, argues the added rules will help restore confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s elections.
“These are issues that we see as major issues that we need to rectify,” King told Capital B Atlanta over the phone on Tuesday.
King was one of the three GOP members of the State Election Board who Trump called “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory” during a campaign rally in Atlanta earlier this month.
“More things to do”
Officials from three metro-Atlanta county election boards have told Capital B Atlanta that the state’s new rules will make it harder for staffers to do their jobs on election night and could delay certification of the results. They’ve been complaining for years about pro-Trump Republicans passing new election integrity laws and implementing new rules that create mandates with which county officials have to comply without additional resources.
“It just brings in more things to do when really, our focus is making sure we’re running a secure and fair election,” LaShandra Little, voter education and outreach manager for Fulton County Registration and Elections, told Capital B Atlanta on Tuesday.
Cathy Woolard, the former Fulton County Registration and Elections Board chair who resigned in late July, said the new rules appear to be an effort by Trump supporters in Georgia to undermine public confidence in the outcome of this year’s presidential race.
Woolard and others expressed concern that the motive of the rule changes is to have the election be decided by the courts — similar to the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush — instead of by Georgia voters.
“I don’t know that there’s any other way to reach a conclusion,” Woolard said on Wednesday.
“Misguided” rule changes?
State law requires county election boards to certify their results within six days of a general election, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. Raffensperger is the Republican elections chief who refused to cooperate with Trump’s request to “find” the 11,780 votes that the former president needed to declare himself the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes in 2020.
Members of Raffensperger’s own party opted earlier this year to remove him from his prior role on the State Election Board via a provision in a new election law known as Senate Bill 189. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the measure into law in May.
Last week, Raffensperger criticized the state board’s rule changes, calling them “misguided.” His office recently told Capital B Atlanta that changing election rules this late in an election year, after primaries have already taken place, is a questionable decision.
“It would be analogous, I think, to playing college football under one set of rules for the first half and a different set of rules for the second half,” said Mike Hassinger, a public information officer in the secretary of state’s office.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, alluded to these rule changes in his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.
“These anti-democratic forces are at work in Georgia and all across our country,” Warnock said.
“Not really feasible”
Karli Wolf, DeKalb County Board of Registration & Elections chair, said the new rule requiring ballots to be hand-counted is “unnecessary” and “not really feasible.”
“I expect that there will be litigation around the implementation of that rule,” Wolf said.
King urged Black voters not to be concerned about her board’s rule changes affecting the outcome of this year’s election.
“We have members on the board who, I believe, even those who I oppose, [that] their opposition is coming from a good place,” King said. “I want [Black voters] to know that I’m looking at both sides of this coin.”
King said the State Election Board is due to address concerns about its rule changes during its next meeting on Sept. 20.
The rule changes are the latest form of alleged voter suppression efforts in Georgia, according to voting rights advocates. The voting rights community also raised concerns about a new web portal that allows users to cancel their voter registration, arguing the tool could be used by fraudsters to cancel people’s registration without their knowledge.
SB 189 also requires unsheltered homeless people to list their county registrar’s address as their place of residence when registering to vote in order to participate in elections and avoid having their voter eligibility challenged.
House Bill 974 grants public access to election ballots submitted by voters via the secretary of state’s website. And HB 1207 removed the legal requirement for polling places to keep a ratio of one voting machine for every 250 voters.
How to ensure your vote counts
County election officials urged voters to check their voter registration regularly online ahead of November — via the state’s My Voter Page — to ensure they haven’t been removed from the voting rolls. They also encouraged voters to vote early in-person to give themselves more time to correct any problems they may encounter at the polls.
Many voters have been reassigned to different precincts this year in response to state lawmakers redrawing Georgia’s political maps. People who arrive at the wrong precinct or whose voter eligibility has been challenged may not have enough time to rectify problems on Election Day, when long lines are expected at the polls.
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7. Early voting begins on Oct. 15 and ends on Nov. 1.
