Controversial rules passed by the Georgia Election Commission on Friday will require all polling places in the state to count ballots by hand and reconcile them with machine tallies before a deadline to certify the election results.
The rules have drawn bipartisan criticism from opponents who say they will slow down the vote count and give election tampering an opening to spread false information and disrupt the certification of the real winner.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (Republican) said in a statement on August 15 that counting ballots by hand at polling places risks compromising the security of the vote and causing dangerous delays.
“Prompt reporting of election results is a hallmark of Georgia’s election administration and enhances voter confidence. Delays in results create a vacuum and lead to misinformation and disinformation,” Raffensperger said.
Read more: Georgia Election Commission passes controversial rules opposed by many local officials
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Supporters argue the rule will increase public confidence in the accuracy of reported results and does not change the requirement that all Georgia counties certify their results by Nov. 12.
“These rules ensure a chain of custody on election night so that ballots are not lost,” Trustee Janice Johnston, one of three members who wrote the rules, said during the board’s public meeting Monday.
Former President Donald Trump praised the three Republican board members who passed a series of last-minute changes, calling them “pit bulls” fighting for a “win.”
Trump has falsely claimed for years that he won the 2020 election, and his support has brought increased attention to the committee’s actions.
Board members did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday, but King previously told USA Today that he wants to “continue to stand up for what is right and ensure Georgia voters have confidence in our elections.”
Here’s what you need to know about the commission’s recent election-related controversy.
What happens if the manual counting doesn’t finish in time?
The manual count rules require three people in each precinct in Georgia (which Raffensperger said has 2,400 precincts) to manually count the ballots and separate them into stacks of 50. The numbers they produce by hand must match not only the machine count, but each other. If the numbers don’t match, poll workers must correct and record the discrepancies “when feasible.”
It’s not clear what will happen if local polling places don’t complete their manual counts by the certification deadline and verify that their ballot tallies match the machine-run results. The new rules say only that the process “must be completed within the designated county certification period.”
When asked what would happen if counties didn’t certify their results by the deadline, Raffensberger’s office reiterated to USA Today that Georgia law states the deadline is Nov. 12, and said, “We expect all counties to follow the law and certify their results by that date.”
Raffensperger has a Nov. 22 deadline to certify the state’s election results. Georgia’s governor then must certify the state’s presidential electors. If that certification process fails, it will go to the courts to decide which electors will be sent to Congress, which will begin the national counting process on Jan. 6.
Anna Bauer wrote in Lawfare on Monday that the new rules may not result in any delays at the local level. Some states, such as Illinois, have been counting ballots by hand without significant delays, and there is nothing in the new rules that explicitly prohibits Georgia counties from reporting machine-counted votes before completing their own hand tally, she noted.
Kim Wyman, a Republican who served as Washington’s secretary of state from 2013 to 2021, previously told USA Today that manual counting errors were to be expected, especially after long hours.
“Humans are not good at monotonous, repetitive tasks,” she says, “which is why so many things in modern life are automated, and vote counting is a great example of that.”
What are election officials saying about this rule?
Many Georgia election officials have voiced opposition to the rule.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, a bipartisan group of more than 500 Georgia officials and staff, tried to dissuade the three board members ahead of Friday’s vote. In a Sept. 17 letter, the association said the manual count rule could slow down the results, lead to fatigued officials failing and undermine public confidence in the election results.
Raffensperger repeated his criticism of the manual count proposal in the hours leading up to the vote. At an election forum on Thursday, he said making sweeping changes to election procedures less than 90 days before the election was a bad idea and that “the more changes you make, the more opportunities there are for things to go wrong.”
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, advised the commission in a letter dated Thursday that the manual count proposal is likely illegal because the state Legislature has not given the commission the authority to require a manual count.
Carr also said new rules on how elections should be conducted “can be disadvantageous when implemented too close to an election, like the rules on the Sept. 20 agenda.”
But Julie Adams, a Republican on the Fulton County Board of Elections in Atlanta, which refused to certify the results of the May primary, defended the rule at the board’s Friday meeting as akin to a bank double-checking the cash it issues.
“The machine counts out $1,000, the teller counts it by hand to make sure it’s $1,000, and then you count it by hand to make sure it’s $1,000,” she said.
Board member Janice Johnston called the criticism “an irrational and widespread panic” at Monday’s board meeting. She specifically took issue with the idea that the manual count rule or the board’s other recent rules could be grounds for not certifying the election.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Johnston said. “I want to assure Democrats, members of other parties and the people of Georgia that these rules will help prevent last-minute questions about the results, audits or recounts.”
Will the new rules come into effect in November?
The dispute over the new manual counting rules may become irrelevant by Election Day because the courts could rule them invalid.
“The manual count rule would not withstand legal challenge and will likely have no effect in practice at all when the election is held,” Bauer wrote in Lawfare, referring to an analysis by the office of Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr that found the rule was likely illegal.
The Georgia Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday about whether they plan to challenge the new rules in court, but they are already challenging some of the committee’s actions.
The two Democratic groups are currently scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 1 in a lawsuit they filed with other groups in late August challenging two rules the elections board passed that month.
One rule requires county election officials to conduct a “reasonable investigation” before certifying the results, and another allows local election officials to inspect election-related documents before certifying. Democrats are asking the judge to make it clear that Georgia counties must meet their Nov. 12 certification deadline regardless of those rules.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison in a statement on Friday called the manual counting rule a “last-ditch attempt by Donald Trump and his ‘pit bulls’ to slow the counting of votes in order to attack and undermine the results he doesn’t like.” He did not say whether the committee planned to file a lawsuit.