On September 20, 2024, Georgia’s State Election Board passed a new rule that changes how votes will be counted in the upcoming November election. The rule mandates that all votes be counted by hand as well as by machine, which could significantly delay the release of election results for the battleground state. According to the rule, a poll manager and two poll officers must open all ballot boxes, take out every individual ballot, and count them. Then, they must look at the ballot counting machine and compare their numbers with the machine’s.
The State Election Board consists of three Republicans, one Democrat, and an Independent chair. The three Republican members, who have openly supported former President Donald Trump, voted in favor of the rule. However, the Board’s chairman (I) warned that this decision was a legal breach of the board’s power, suggesting that the rule should be left to the state legislature. Elizabeth Young, a senior attorney under Georgia’s Attorney General Chris Carr (R), echoed these concerns in a letter from Carr’s office to the Elections Board. She explained that “the Board runs a substantial risk of intruding upon the General Assembly’s constitutional right to legislate.” She elaborated further on how the rule could be nullified if it is brought to a court of law. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger (R), explained in a recent CNN article that, “we’re really just three weeks before [Georgia] start[s] early voting, and it’s just too late in the cycle.”
The voter registration deadline in Georgia was October 7, and early voting began on October 15, meaning there is less than one month before the general election. At this point, many poll workers have already been trained in running the polls, but only with Georgia’s old ballot counting procedures. This opens up possibilities for a huge margin of error from miscounted votes and general human inaccuracy. Those unclear results may then open up a gateway for Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp (R) to refuse to certify the election results. Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, expressed his disgust in a post-vote statement to the Board. In his statement, he described this as a mere “eleventh-hour effort” set up by Donald Trump and his allies, so they could slow ballot counting and “undermine any result they don’t like.” Outrage has sparked within both parties, and the question of whether this rule is even legal still hangs in the air. The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to repeal this rule on September 30. They argue that this rule violates Georgia state law and that the law must be blocked before it can wreak havoc on the election. In their lawsuit, they cited statements from both Chris Carr and Brad Raffensberger on the shaky legality of this rule. The decision for this lawsuit will be released soon.
This article also appears in our October 2024 print edition.
