Caption
Butts County elections director Brook Schreiner (right, in blue) waits for her turn to voice opposition to the election rule changes proposed by the State Board of Elections Sept. 20, 2024.
Credit: Grant Blankenship / GPB News
Section Branding
Header Content
State Election Board passes new rule ordering hand count of ballots. Election officials aren't happy
Hero Image
Primary Content
LISTEN: Georgia’s State Election Board passed arguably the most contentious of the new rules it had been considering for conducting elections in the state on Friday over the objections of county-level election directors and over the advice of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
Georgia’s State Election Board passed arguably the most contentious of the new rules it had been considering for conducting elections in the state on Friday over the objections of county-level election directors and over the advice of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.
Along a 3-to-2 largely party line vote, the SEB approved the rule mandating a hand count of paper ballots at the close of polls at every poll site, before the actual tabulation of votes or before even submitting them to county election heads.
Many local elections directors who spoke before the vote, such as Tate Hall of Cobb County, said they opposed the rule because its mere passage violates the federal National Voting Rights act by coming inside the 90-day “quiet period” before an election.
“Yesterday, Cobb County mailed just over 1,000 ballots to our uniformed and overseas voters," Hall said. "Today we mailed 70 ballots to reported overseas voters. First ballots are out the door. The election has officially begun.”
In a memo to the State Election Board, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said the hand count of ballot rule is not at all supported by state law. Carr said other proposed rules were likely an overstep of board authority, too.
During discussion before the vote, board chair John Fervier said the overwhelming response by elections workers to the hand count rule had been negative in the run up to the meeting, too. He would go on to vote against the rule, which passed on a 3-2 vote.
“I do think it’s too close to the election; I do,” Fervier said.
Fervier also hewed to Carr’s logic.
“Most importantly, I believe this is not supported at all by statute,” Fervier said. “If the Legislature wanted this, they would have put it in statute.”
Fervier’s fellow board member Janelle King took umbrage at being reminded of the apparent conflict, accusing Fervier of inviting lawsuits.
“It's an opinion and I respect the opinion,” King said of Carr’s memo. “But the opinion doesn't mean that we have to take it. I can also show that we have, in our code, we have the ability to set these rules in place. And that's what we're going to do.”
Milton Kidd directs elections in Douglas County. He said he’s already heard from some of his poll workers that they don’t want to do the job if they have to hand count paper ballots at their precincts.
“That's not a hypothetical; that will happen,” Kidd said. “There’s going to be people that are going to be having these conversations across the state of Georgia that are not going to want to be poll workers.”
If that happened, election directors said it would throw another roadblock between the end of the election and something that is in fact mandated by law: the certification of local election results and their transmission to the state.
Board members King and Janice Johnston both said they had faith election officials could pull it off.
Georgia House Rep. Saira Draper of District 90 said she couldn’t see how the hand count rule or any of the other rules still under consideration will make the 2024 election better.
“I think putting 11, maybe 12 rules into play days before Election Day is a grift,” Draper said. “I think what is happening is we are setting up our counties to fail.”
Instead of election security, Draper said, the real result of the new rules would likely just be chaos.
Secondary Content
Author
Bottom Content
