Georgia's Republican-led election board OKs controversial rule to hand-count ballots

ATLANTA — The Georgia State Election Board approved a controversial rule Friday requiring a hand count of the number of ballots cast on Election Day.

Republicans advanced the measure over the opposition of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general and dozens of local election officials who said the last-minute change could cause delays and confusion on election night and the days that follow.

“If this board votes to implement this rule, I think that we put ourselves in legal jeopardy,” said John Fervier, the board’s nonpartisan chair, who voted against the proposal.

The board’s actions in recent weeks have put an added spotlight on election administration in Georgia, where former President Donald Trump and others advanced baseless claims of fraud following the 2020 election, and which is expected to again be a crucial swing state in the 2024 race.

The rule approved Friday mandates the poll manager and two poll officers in each precinct each count the number of paper ballots in each ballot box to compare with the total generated by the ballot scanner.

A number of local election officials testified against the hand counts, raising concerns that human error could easily result in discrepancies. While the rule is about counting ballots, not individual contests, as some conservatives have called for in recent years across the country, election experts agree that hand counts are far slower and less reliable than machine tabulation.

Election officials also warned that changing the rules this late in the voting season could cause confusion, with poll working training underway in many counties.

“Over 200 pages of election code and rules have been implemented since 2020,” testified Ethan Compton, the elections supervisor in Irwin County. “We have practiced on them, we have trained, we are prepared, we are ready. Do not change this at the last second.”

“We are verifying a set of numbers by using another means,” said Sharlene Alexander, a Republican member of the Fayette County Elections Board who co-sponsored the rule. “That’s all we’re doing.”

The change was backed by the three Republican members of the state board, who have already drawn scrutiny for advancing changes to how local election boards certify election results. Those rules are being challenged in the courts, with a trial scheduled for Oct. 1.

The office of Georgia’s attorney general advised against advancing the hand count rules.

“These proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do,” Elizabeth Young, senior assistant attorney general, wrote in the letter to the board.

The board tabled a vote on another rule requiring a similar hand count of the number of ballots cast during advance voting. Janelle King, one of the Republican members, asked to revisit that proposal, along with several others, after the 2024 election.

The board voted on 11 total rule changes on Friday. Six of them passed, including allowing poll watchers access to more places during the tabulation of votes, daily posting of the number of people in each county who cast a ballot and publicly posting reconciliation reports to the county website.