The Georgia State Election Board announced it would require counties to hand-count ballots on Election Day.
In a 3-2 vote on Friday, the swing state’s Election Board will have to tabulate each paper ballot cast by hand. The rule states the number of paper ballots, not the number of votes, would 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 will decide whether to recount the next day.
Georgia’s attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office, and an association of county election officials strongly opposed the move. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the new rule would cause “chaos” this close to the election.
“We have several concerns,” he said. “Number one is the actual counting of the number of ballots that you have at the precinct. That’s going to take time. Everything that we’ve done for the last six years has to speed up the process to give the voters the results quicker, and all of a sudden, now they’re adding an element that it’s actually going to take longer.”
Other critics argued it would be an added step that could delay the presidential election results.
“I want to make on the record that we’ll be going against the advice of our legal counsel by voting in the affirmative,” the Georgia election board's chair, John Fervier, said. He was appointed by the state’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA).
Fervier and Sara Tindall Ghazal, the only Democrat appointee on the panel, voted against the new rules, arguing that it was "too late to train a lot of poll workers.”
However, former President Donald Trump and several other Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), praised the ruling.
“YES!!!" Greene posted on X. "Way to go, GA State Election Board!! Thank you for taking every step to fight for election integrity!!”
Janelle King, one of the board members who voted in favor of the new rule, also commented, saying she isn’t concerned about it.
“I think it’s actually going to be the reverse,” she said, adding that “we won’t have a situation where we have any candidates saying that they think the count is off or they want an audit because something went wrong. We would have caught it at an early stage.”
Last year, I reported that the Secretary of State in Georgia admitted there was faulty while handling the ballots during the 2020 election. Greene brought up the issue after her ex-husband, Perry Greene, showed up to Floyd County, Georgia polls to vote and was told he had already voted by absentee ballot despite never requesting one.
Shortly after this, Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State's office, admitted that the ballots that year were faulty. He also revealed that Floyd County made "many mistakes" during the 2020 election, adding that the office's director was forced to resign.
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