In a change that the Republican state attorney general believes is unlawful, the MAGA-controlled Georgia state election board voted Friday, in a 3-2 vote, to enact a new rule that requires counties in the state to hand-count ballots — a process that is based on conspiracy theories about voting machines that experts say is both inefficient and error-prone.
The latest rule, like the two others that have recently been approved by the Trump-backed board, has the potential to upend the November election by causing significant delays in election certification in the state.
The new rule will require elections workers to hand count the number of ballots cast in addition to a machine tabulation of the results in each precinct. Supporters claim the rule will “ensure the secure, transparent, and accurate counting of ballots by requiring a systematic process where ballots are independently hand-counted by three sworn poll officers,” according to the proposal. But, the rule is rooted in the wild, dangerous and baseless conspiracy theory from the 2020 election that ballot tabulation machines were somehow flipping votes.
And the rule requires that this hand-count take place the night of the election or the next day — a task that county officials say is impossible to accomplish in most of the state’s counties.
Georgia Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper sharply criticized the change during Friday’s vote, calling out her fellow Trump-endorsed board members’ “grift” for what it is: “It makes me question whether members of this board are operating in good faith,” she said, per the Washington Post. “Putting 11, maybe 12 new rules into play days before Election Day is a grift. We are setting up our counties to fail. Why do we know they are going to fail? Because they are telling you that.”
Three GOP members of the board who voted in favor of Friday’s hand count rule and two others last month, were recently shouted out by name by Trump at a campaign rally last month. Trump referred to the three board members — Janelle King, Janice Johnston and Rick Jaffares — as “pitbulls, fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
This is just the latest in a series of rules, designed to sow seeds of distrust in the election system, that the Trump-backed board has recently approved. Last month, the board approved two rules that give election deniers new authority to potentially delay certification of the election.
The first rule, which passed on August 6, gives the board the power to not certify the results of the election until after a “reasonable inquiry” into any discrepancies in the voting process at the county level has been conducted by election officials. The rule, as previously reported by TPM, is intentionally vague and never defines what constitutes a “reasonable inquiry.”
“It has potential to allow those election deniers who have made it onto seats on election boards in our state to hold up a perfectly viable election to hold that up and to keep it from moving forward as pace as it should,” Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director of the nonpartisan New Georgia Project previously said in an interview with TPM.
The second rule, approved on August 19, gives election board members authority to “examine all election-related documentation before certifying the results.” The rule also permits the board to examine any discrepancies between the ballot count and the number of voters prior to certification.
Friday’s rule, like the previous two, however, is merely a way for election deniers on the board to potentially delay the certification process with false claims of voter fraud.
The state election board has increasingly been met with criticism, from Democrats and Republicans alike, for passing new rules so clearly designed to help one political candidate, and for doing it so close to the election.
Earlier this week, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr’s office pushed back on the board’s rule changes, saying in a memo: “As a general matter, the passage of any rules concerning the conduct of elections are disfavored when implemented as close to an election as the rules on the September 20 agenda,” according to reporting from The Guardian.
The memo continues: “the Board risks passing rules that may easily be challenged and determined to be invalid.”
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has also been openly critical of the board and its rules too. He previously described the state election board as “a mess” and said the board’s August rules are an “effort to impose new rule making.” He’s also said that the three Trump-endorsed board members are “living in the past.”
And more recently, per CNN, Raffensperger commented on the timing of the rule changes, saying: “We’re 50 days out before we have our election. In fact, we’re really just three weeks before we start early voting, and it’s just too late in the cycle.”
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