This post was updated at 8:40 p.m. Sept. 20, 2024, to include additional comment.
Three Donald Trump loyalist Georgia State Election Board members adopted a contentious rule Friday requiring the hand counting of ballots cast during the upcoming Nov. 5 election despite warnings from county election directors that it could lead to more delays with reporting results this fall.
The rule requiring local hand counts was just one rule on the agenda at a daylong hearing Friday that will spill over into Monday when the election board is set to reconvene to return to the rest of the list.
Georgia’s attorney general also wrote to board members ahead of Friday’s meeting that their planned rule changes exceeded their legal authority ahead of November’s pivotal presidential election.
The new ballot counting rule was finalized by a 3-2 vote Friday with right-wing election board members Janice Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares voting in favor of implementing the new rule in time for the upcoming election headlined by the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
The new rule requires that three poll workers sort ballots into piles of 50 and count every ballot to determine if the hand count accurately aligns with the number of total ballots scanned at each polling location on Election Day. It requires a count of the number of ballots cast, not a count of which candidate received more votes. The vote total would be reported separately.
Another ballot counting rule proposed for early voting was tabled Friday after the board voted 4-1 to hold it until after the upcoming election. That rule would have required a daily hand count of ballots at each polling site during the three-week early voting period.
John Fervier, Georgia Election Board chairman. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
The ballot counting rule raised concerns that county election officers would not have time to properly train poll workers or have enough resources to implement the changes by the start of advance voting Oct. 15.
Additionally, opponents of both rules expressed concerns over the added time-consuming regulations being imposed on election workers and that counting ballots after polls close for early voting would not comply with ballot security storage requirements and chain-of-custody procedures.
Travis Doss, president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, urged the state board Friday to delay the adoption of 11 rules on the board’s agenda, including the two ballot counting measures.
“Should you approve these rules today, they will not legally take effect until Oct. 11, leaving us only 25 days until Election Day,” said Doss, the executive director of the Richmond County board of elections. “Twenty five days is an extremely limited window, especially when we are this close to an election. This is akin to entering the third trimester of pregnancy, nearing the due date. Now is simply not the time to implement sweeping changes that could create unnecessary confusion.”
The Democratic Party of Georgia, the left-leaning voting rights group Fair Fight Action, and nonpartisan election officials are expressing concerns that several rules on Friday’s election board agenda could delay reporting of results and be weaponized to undermine the electoral process by Trump supporters if he loses the upcoming election.
Federal law mandates a 90-day quiet period for any changes to voter registration and core election procedures. State law requires a 60-day notice for changes to polling places and voting precincts. Current Georgia election board regulations mandate voters receive a 30-day notification of any changes affecting a polling place.
County election offices across the state began mailing out ballots Tuesday to military service members and Georgia residents currently living overseas. The first batches of absentee ballots will start being mailed out Oct. 7 to voters who requested them.
Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called out the right-wing Georgia officials for passing harmful election rules ahead of the November election.
Trump referred to the King, Jeffares and Johnston as “pit bulls” fighting for “honesty, transparency and victory” during his Atlanta campaign rally last month.
“This is nothing more than an eleventh-hour effort by Donald Trump and his ‘pit bulls’ to slow down the counting of ballots so they can attack and undermine any result they don’t like,” Harrison said in a statement Friday. “There are already strong laws to ensure votes are counted fairly and expeditiously.”
In a memo sent to the election board this week, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr warned that it was the election board’s responsibility to ensure that proposed rules changes were in compliance with election laws prior to Friday. He also warned the board that the rules are likely in violation of state law that governs the type of legislation that state agencies can enforce.
Fervier stated Friday that guidance from Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have reinforced his belief that the board is exceeding its authority by amending the ballot counting rules.
Fervier said the large number of public comments weighing in on the ballot counting proposals were about evenly split between those in favor and those opposed. Fervier said he ultimately decided he would defer to the “overwhelming” number of county election directors pleading to not make the changes this close to the election.
“Most importantly, I believe that this is not supported at all in statute,” Fervier said about the proposal for counting ballots throughout early voting. “This board is an administrative body, it’s not a legislative body. If the Legislature had wanted this, they would have put it in statute.”
King said she’s heard from a number of poll workers across the state interested in helping track ballots at each polling place.
The rule has been amended to allow election workers at polling stations with more than 750 ballots cast on Election Day to delay the hand count until the following day and if necessary continue through the week election as results are certified by local election boards.
King stressed the importance of giving election workers sufficient time to confirm if the machine ballot count matches the human ballot count. Once the polls close on election night, there is not as much time as three weeks for reconciling any discrepancies.
“Should we not have those extra days like we do with early voting, where we can go through, look at the data to see what’s happened the day before,” she said. “We’re now at the mercy of addressing this issue on a statewide level. And if we want to talk about chaos, we are still to this day talking about things that took place, not just in 2020, but also in 2018.”
King asked the board to wait until after the 2024 election cycle is complete before the election board revisits the plan to count ballots by hand throughout early voting.
“It’s not that I don’t like the rule… It’s just that I don’t feel comfortable implementing it today for 2024 unless those concerns can be mitigated just because this election cycle is extremely contentious, it’s extremely close, and it’s a presidential election.”
One of the most controversial changes to election procedures at the State Election Board has been a new certification rule that has been the subject of a lawsuit and ethics complaints since it was introduced this summer.
Georgia Donald Trump Election Board members Rick Jeffares, left, and Janice Johnston. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
The Democratic Party of Georgia is asking a court to block the implementation of a rule it claims gives local officials broad authority to hunt for election irregularities, delay certification, and alter a longstanding practice of confirming election results by local officials.
The Georgia Republican Party and three GOP state board members passed last month a rule that gives local election board officials the ability to conduct “reasonable inquiries” and inspect any election records prior to certifying election results.
Another election certification lawsuit is pending between Fulton County Board of Elections and Registration and Fulton Election Board Member Julie Adams, who seeks to overhaul the Georgia election law so local officials can refuse to certify results if they find discrepancies in voting data and other election irregularities.
In Friday’s election board meeting, Adams expressed confusion about the intense backlash to provisions mandating that more election data be made public, adding more poll watchers to monitor vote tabulation and taking extra steps to verify the number of votes cast in an election.
Adams said Friday she appreciates the Georgia board officials who support changes that will improve accuracy and transparency of elections.
Natalie Crawford, founder of Georgia First, a nonprofit that advocates for election access and security, said the election board has exceeded its legal authority by mandating a vague, undefined inquiry into election results before county election boards can even certify.
She called out the three state election officials loyal to Trump for “risking unnecessary certification delays” by giving county election boards unlimited access to election records without needing any justification ahead of certifying the results.
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Publish date : 2024-09-20 13:45:00
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