Georgia’s State Election Board voted on Friday to implement a new rule requiring poll workers to manually count paper ballots at each precinct, despite objections from top state officials. The decision was passed by a 3-2 vote, overruling advice from the state attorney general’s office, the secretary of state, and county election officials.
🔍 What’s Happening:
- The new regulation mandates that poll workers at each precinct count the number of paper ballots—three separate times—until all counts match.
- If the ballot scanners have more than 750 ballots at the end of voting, the poll manager may delay the count until the next day.
- The rule doesn’t require counting the actual votes by hand, just the number of ballots.
🚨 Between the Lines: The rule is likely to face legal challenges.
- According to the Georgia attorney general’s office, there’s no law in the state that permits the hand-counting of ballots before they are submitted for vote tallying.
- The rule may be considered an overreach by the board, as it’s seen as “impermissible legislation” that could violate state law.
⚖️ The Big Picture: This decision may be seen as politically charged.
- All three members who voted for the rule were praised by former President Donald Trump during a rally in Atlanta last month, a nod to ongoing disputes over the 2020 election process.
- Election officials in Georgia, particularly in rural counties, worry this new rule could delay results and add unnecessary pressure to already overworked poll workers.
Georgia’s election system, already under a microscope due to national attention in recent election cycles, is once again in the crosshairs with a rule that many argue could create more chaos than clarity.
