The Georgia State Election Board ruled Friday that county officials must hand-count ballots in November’s presidential election, sparking fears of long delays and chaos in the crucial battleground state. File Photo by Erik S. Lesser/UPI |
License PhotoSept. 20 (UPI) — Georgia’s state election board, dominated by supporters of former President Donald Trump, on Friday approved a controversial measure requiring hand-counting of ballots that critics say could create chaos in November.
In a 3-2 party line vote, the board approved a measure requiring that in addition to existing machine counts, poll managers and two sworn poll officers in each of Georgia’s precincts must now unseal ballot boxes, remove and record the ballots, and have three poll officers independently count them by hand on the night of the Nov. 5 election or the next day.
The purpose of the rule is to “ensure the secure, transparent, and accurate counting of ballots by requiring a systematic process where ballots are independently hand-counted by three sworn poll officers,” the board states in the order signed by Chairman John Fervier, who voted against the measure.
The board passed into the control of a pro-Trump majority after the Republican-dominated state Legislature passed sweeping election reform laws in 2021 removing Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other members from the body in the wake of Trump’s false claims that his 11,000-vote loss to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in 2020 was due to voter fraud.
Since then its newer GOP members appointed by the Legislature — including two who previously spread falsehoods about Trump’s 2020 loss — have issued a series of new rules they insist are necessary to prevent illegal voting but which others contend amount to a thinly disguised effort to create nationwide chaos and delays in the event that Vice President Kamala Harris wins the crucial battleground state over Trump.
Last month, national and state Democrats, along with a number of county board members, sued the election board over two earlier rules handing greater authority to local election officials to investigate and delay certification of election results.
But Friday’s hand-counting measure was the most far-reaching of the recent changes and was passed over the objections of many county-level election directors and that of Chris Carr, Georgia’s Republican attorney general.
In testimony before the vote, election managers warned that not only was the rule likely illegal because it comes during a 90-day “quiet period” before an election but would also be impossible to efficiently implement, especially in populous counties where hand-counting could take weeks or even months.
It could also discourage poll workers from volunteering for duty, they said.
“The election has officially begun,” said Cobb County Election Director Tate Hall, noting that 1,000 ballots had already been mailed out to the state’s uniformed and overseas voters.
Carr, meanwhile, asserted in a memo to the Election Board the hand-count rule is not supported by state law.
“If the Legislature wanted this, they would have put it in statute,” he wrote, according to Georgia Public Radio.
Like the earlier rule changes, Friday’s move is also likely to be challenged in court.
