The pleas from dozens of Georgia election board leaders and staffers on Friday weren’t enough to dissuade State Election Board members from approving a new rule requiring poll workers to hand count ballots on Election Day in November.
County election officials from across the state traveled to the State Capitol on Friday to speak out against the new rule, arguing counting ballots by hand will increase the odds for human error and create needless bureaucratic obstacles that will throw Georgia’s presidential election into “chaos” on Nov. 5.
But the Republican members of the State Election Board say the new rule is necessary to restore public confidence in Georgia’s election results nearly four years after former President Donald Trump disputed his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr have determined the board’s recently proposed rule changes may conflict with state law.
Gov. Brian Kemp so far has declined to take action against the board even though critics say it’s within his power to have members removed for their recent actions.
Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown, who attended Friday’s meeting, denounced the new rule during an afternoon press conference, characterizing it as a threat to the will of Black voters in Georgia.
“There’s a real threat that our votes are going to be undermined,” Brown told Capital B Atlanta on Friday. “There are people on this election board that are seeking to actually overturn the will of the people.”
The majority-Republican, five-member board voted 3-2 along partisan lines inside the Gold Dome early Friday afternoon to enact the new rule, which is set to take effect three days after early voting begins in Georgia on Oct. 7, amid the presidential election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Democratic operatives and voting rights advocates have sued the state to prevent election rule changes from being implemented with the Nov. 5 election less than two months away.
Critics contend the goal of pro-Trump operatives on state and county election boards in Georgia and other battleground states is to sow seeds of public doubt in the outcome and put it in the hands of courtroom judges if the election doesn’t go the way they want.
The board’s only Democrat, Sarah Tindall Ghazal, and board chairman John Fervier voted against the new rule. Ghazal said local election officials have told the state board complying with the rule will make doing their jobs virtually impossible on election night.
“If we pass a rule, they’re required to adhere to it,” Ghazal said during the hearing. “They’re telling us they can’t. They’re telling us there is a problem.”
The board’s three Republican members — Janelle King, Rick Jeffares, and Janice Johnston — voted in favor of the measure. Trump recently praised the three GOP members of the board by name, calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” during an August campaign rally in Atlanta.
Johnston said concerns about the timing of the rule change are misplaced, noting several rules the board has enacted right before elections in recent years.
“The healing cry about how late it is to be adopting these rules, I don’t buy,” Johnston said during the meeting. “The concern about timing probably should be thought about a little more carefully.”
Ahead of the vote, roughly 30 people from across the state addressed the state board during the public comment portion of its meeting. Most of them were members of the Georgia Association for Voter’s Rights and Election Oversight and their supporters in the voting rights community. GAVREO’s leaders sent an Aug. 21 letter to the board asking its members to stop changing rules so close to the November election.
“The idea that you’re not going to listen to the individuals that are charged with conducting elections is absurd to me,” Douglas County Elections Director Milton Kidd said during the meeting. “I challenge you to go into any county in the state of Georgia and to do the rules that you’re passing today… Work as a poll worker all day and then count the ballots [by hand].”
The board also voted 4-1 to table discussion of a rule that would require early votes be hand counted each time ballot scanners are emptied to prevent potential tampering.
State Election Board member King proposed tabling the rule until after the election. Additional proposed rules weren’t voted on by press time Friday afternoon.
