(AP) – County election officials in Georgia have asked the state election board to stop making rule changes ahead of the November election, fearing they will create unnecessary confusion among poll workers and voters.
The State Council has reviewed a number of proposed rules in recent months and adopted several of them. At a meeting on Monday, State Council members approved a new rule on the certification of election results and announced that they will consider additional rules at a meeting on September 20.
Any rules passed at the September meeting would take effect twenty days after overseas and military ballots are mailed and shortly before early in-person voting begins.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials (GAVREO) said in a statement on Tuesday that its members were “seriously concerned” that any further changes would disrupt the preparation and training of poll workers already underway.
“Any last-minute change in the rules could undermine public confidence in the electoral process and place undue pressure on the people responsible for running the election and administering the election,” the organization’s president, W. Travis Doss Jr., said in the statement. “This could ultimately lead to errors or delays in voting, and that is the last thing anyone wants.”
Two members of the five-member State Election Board – the nonpartisan chairman and the only Democrat on the panel – also expressed concerns about imposing new rules so close to the November election. However, a trio of Republican members who won praise from former President Donald Trump pushed for the new rules to be implemented.
“We urge the State Board of Elections to seriously consider the impact of further rule changes and to prioritize the integrity and smooth running of the upcoming election,” Doss said in the GAVREO statement. “Our poll workers, election administrators and voters deserve clarity and uniformity in the rules that will guide this critical process.”
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