Georgia's Republican-led election board OKs controversial rule to hand-count ballots

ATLANTA — The Georgia State Election Board approved a controversial rule Friday requiring a hand count of the number of ballots cast on Election Day.

Republicans advanced the measure over the opposition of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general and dozens of local election officials who said the last-minute change could cause delays and confusion on election night and the days that follow.

“If this board votes to implement this rule, I think that we put ourselves in legal jeopardy,” said John Fervier, the board’s nonpartisan chair, who voted against the proposal.

The board’s actions in recent weeks have put an added spotlight on election administration in Georgia, where former President Donald Trump and others advanced baseless claims of fraud following the 2020 election, and which is expected to again be a crucial swing state in the 2024 race.

The rule approved Friday mandates the poll manager and two poll officers in each precinct each count the number of paper ballots in each ballot box to compare with the total generated by the ballot scanner.

A number of local election officials testified against the hand counts, raising concerns that human error could easily result in discrepancies. While the rule is about counting ballots, not individual contests, as some conservatives have called for in recent years across the country, election experts agree that hand counts are far slower and less reliable than machine tabulation.

Election officials also warned that changing the rules this late in the voting season could cause confusion, with poll working training underway in many counties.

“Over 200 pages of election code and rules have been implemented since 2020,” testified Ethan Compton, the elections