Georgia’s Republican-controlled election board voted on Friday (Sep 20) to require a labor-intensive hand count of potentially millions of ballots in November, a move voting rights advocates say could cause delays, introduce errors and lay the groundwork for spurious challenges in the battleground state.
The hand-count rule is the latest rule change passed in recent months by a pro-Trump conservative majority of the board who say they are attempting to make the Nov 5 election more secure and transparent.
Voting rights groups say the changes could allow rogue county election board members to delay or deny certification of election results, throwing the state’s vote into chaos, while the state attorney general’s office warned the board was likely exceeding its statutory authority with some of the moves.
Georgia is one of seven states likely to determine the contest between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the 2020 election, Trump lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes out of approximately five million votes cast. Trump has maintained, with no evidence, that the result was tainted by fraud.
The hand-count rule, which passed in a 3-2 vote, was denounced by election administrators and poll workers who attended the meeting and opposed by Georgia’s Republican-led secretary of state and attorney general’s offices.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top election official, said ahead of the meeting that the rule would introduce “the opportunity for error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud.”
As the hearing began on Friday, members of the public, including county elections supervisors, poll workers and voting rights advocates, urged the board to vote down the hand-count rule, arguing it would create logistical problems, funding shortfalls and security concerns.
