September 21 :
Proponents of voting rights in Georgia are concerned that the state's Republican-controlled election board's decision to mandate a labor-intensive hand count of possibly millions of ballots in November will lead to delays, mistakes, and the establishment of baseless challenges. The vote took place on September 20.
As part of its efforts to ensure a more secure election on November 5, the board's conservative majority—which leans toward Trump—has made a number of amendments in recent months, including the hand-count requirement. The revisions, according to voting rights organizations, might pave the way for disgruntled county election board members to stall or refuse to certify election results, which would destabilize the state's voting process.
This state is among seven that could decide the presidential race between Donald Trump (R-IN) and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris (CA). Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia in 2020 by a margin of less than 12,000 votes. Trump has insisted, without providing any proof, that the outcome was contaminated by fraud.
At the meeting, election administrators and poll workers spoke out against the hand-count rule, which was ultimately approved by a 3-2 vote despite opposition from the Georgia secretary of state's office and the attorney general's office.
Voting rights activists, county elections supervisors, and poll workers were among the public who spoke out against the hand-count rule at the start of the hearing on September 20. They said the measure was unnecessary and would lead to financial shortages, security issues, and logistical nightmares.
Some also argued that changing processes so near to the election was premature. "The process has begun. Irwin County's election supervisor, Ethan Compton, informed the board that the voting process has started. "This is not the time to change the rules." Elections board member Janelle King, however, insisted that the hand count was necessary for accuracy, despite the fact that it would postpone results.
"What I don’t want to do is set a precedent that we are okay with speed over accuracy," he added. John Fervier, a Republican who chairs the board, voted against the rule because a "overwhelming number of election officals" contacted him and expressed their opposition to the change.
Fervier expressed his belief that the timing is too near to the election. "It's too late to train a lot of poll workers." According to Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning public policy institute, Georgia is now the only state in the US to incorporate such a requirement into the normal process of tabulating machine-recorded results.
Republican Brad Raffensperger, the state's top election official and secretary of state, had previously cautioned that the change would create "the opportunity for error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud." Last week, the state attorney general's office echoed the board's concerns, saying that the rule would be an overreach of the board's legislative jurisdiction.
Despite his denials, Trump is facing criminal charges on allegations that he pushed Georgia officials to overturn his 2020 election loss. Conservative activists and lawmakers nationwide have been prompted to advocate for new voting restrictions in an effort to avoid fraud by his persistent and misleading assertions regarding the integrity of U.S. elections.
Under the hand count regulation, three poll workers from each of the 6,500 precincts in the state would be tasked with opening the sealed boxes containing the ballots that have been scanned by machines and then conducting a manual count, beginning immediately after election night.
Any ballot box that receives over 1,500 ballots before the end of the day during early voting, which begins on Oct. 15, would be required to do so according to a separate rule. More over half of the state's five million voters participated in early voting for the 2020 presidential contest.
The head of policy and strategy for Verified Voting, Mark Lindeman, stated that several states employ hand counts during recounts in close elections or as part of regular post-election audits. Verified Voting advocates for the proper use of technology in elections. Instead of using voting machines, a small number of jurisdictions rely on hand counts.
According to experts, Georgia has several measures in place to guarantee an accurate tally, such as comparing the total number of ballots scanned, printed, and signed. Furthermore, in order to ensure accuracy, the state does audits following the election.
