Georgia elections board requiring hand counts on election day

The Georgia State Election Board on Friday passed a measure mandating poll workers perform hand counts on Election Day.

The board voted 3-2 in favor of the measure, which requires that three separate poll workers to count paper ballots at each polling place until the counts match, the Associated Press reported. If a scanner has more than 750 ballots when voting end, the poll manager can opt to start counting the next day, according to the wire.

Georgia would be the only state in the country with such a rule, WSB Radio reported.

“By mandating hand counts that can magnify discrepancies and potentially delay results, the Georgia State Election Board has taken another dangerous step to create doubt in our election process where there should be none,” All Voting is Local Action Georgia State Director Kristin Nabers said in a statement. “Counting thousands of ballots by hand will be an incredibly tedious, expensive, and possibly error-prone process. Any human errors can be exploited by election deniers to sow distrust and decrease confidence in our elections and in the hard-working election officials that run them.

“Many election workers have spoken recently about the threats they are facing from the conspiracy theorists who refuse to believe that our elections are fair, and these rules just add fuel to that fire,” Nabers added. “Implementing these drastic changes less than a month before the start of early voting means counties may have to restart their training of poll workers. These unnecessary hand counts are setting the county election offices up for failure.”

Elections have been a hot topic in the Peach State since the 2020 presidential election, with state lawmakers passing multiple election measures, including the high-profile Senate Bill 202, also known as the Election Integrity Act of 2021. Last month, Georgia’s election board approved a measure that allows county election boards to make a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results.

After the move, a group of Georgia elected officials joined a coalition to demand the governor remove three State Election Board members over what they see as violations of state law. At the time, state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, D-Lawrenceville, said her office delivered a letter to the office of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp asking him to remove Janice Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares from the board, saying they violated its code of ethics and the state’s open meetings law to pass new election regulations.