Georgia Election Board Will Require Hand-Counting Of Election Night Ballots
GEORGIA — The Georgia State Election Board voted Friday to require counties to hand-count all ballots cast on Election Day, a decision that could significantly delay the reporting of results, according to multiple reports.
The move was approved in a 3-2 vote and carried by board members who've been praised by former President Donald Trump , NBC News reported . State Democrats, as well as the Republican secretary of state and attorney general, have also spoken out against the rule.
"I want to make on the record that we'll be going against the advice of our legal counsel by voting in the affirmative," Georgia election board chair John Fervier said before the motion passed, according to NBC News . Fervier and Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democratic appointee on the panel, voted against the rule.
The move is the latest in a stream of policies passed by officials in the last three months. Last month, the board granted local officials new power over certifying the election, The New York Times reported, which opponents said could possibly disrupt the process if Trump loses in November.
The Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party of Georgia and several individuals filed a lawsuit challenging those rules last month, reports said.
The new rule requires that the number of paper ballots — not the number of votes — be counted at each polling place by three separate poll workers until all three counts are the same. If a scanner has more than 750 ballots inside at the end of voting, the poll manager can decide to begin the count the following day.
Several county election officials who spoke out against the rule during a public comment period preceding the vote warned that having to count the ballots by hand at polling places could delay the reporting of election night results. They also worried about putting an additional burden on poll workers who have already worked a long day.
In a memo sent to election board members Thursday, the office of state Attorney General Chris Carr said no provision in state law allows counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level before the ballots are brought to the county election superintendent for vote tallying.
As a result, the memo says, the rule is "not tethered to any statute" and is "likely the precise kind of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do."
Republicans on the board who voted for the new rule called it a reasonable step to ensure accuracy, the Times reported .
"We're not asking for a full election audit," Janice Johnston said during Tuesday's meeting in Atlanta. "We're just asking for a reasonable inquiry."
Hand counting in addition to a machine count could introduce errors and confusion into the process and potential disrupt the custody of ballots, the Times said. To start hand-counting on election night, poll workers will have to break open the seals on boxes of completed ballots, possibly exposing the ballots to fraud or loss.
In previous elections, ballots remain sealed and stored securely unless a recount was ordered, the Times said.
