Local election officials are raising the alarm about further last-minute rule changes by the Georgia State Board of Elections, both in a letter from their statewide professional association on Wednesday and in dozens of public comments at the board’s all-day meeting on Monday.
“With less than 77 days remaining until the presidential election, the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials (GAVREO) is calling on the State Election Board (SEB) to stop implementing additional SEB election rules that would go into effect for the upcoming election,” the letter said.
GAVREO warned that further changes could jeopardize the smooth conduct of the already contentious November 5 general election. “GAVREO members are deeply concerned that dramatic changes at this stage will disrupt the preparation and training processes already underway for poll workers, postal voting, early voting and preparation for election day,” the group wrote.
Hundreds of viewers tuned in to the virtual meeting of the State Elections Board on Monday, including dozens of local election officials who voiced opposition to last-minute rule changes in the election certification process, including a proposal that would require Election Day ballots to be hand-counted at polling places on election night after polls close.
The state election board is scheduled to vote on the manual counting rule at its next meeting on September 20.
“Please understand that poll workers will arrive at the polling place at 5:30 a.m. on Election Day,” Anita Tucker, deputy secretary of the Forsyth County Registration and Elections Board, told the board in a public statement.
“The probability that the hand count after 7 p.m. in 159 counties will be correct on the first try is zero. It is unreasonable to expect poll workers to do that,” Tucker said, urging the committee not to implement the hand count rule.
In Georgia, ballots are counted by machine. Paper printouts serve as a backup for the electronically scanned ballots in the event of a recount or audit.
Rebecca England, Greene County’s election supervisor, raised another concern: security.
“One of the top priorities on Election Day is maintaining the chain of custody of ballots. My concern with this proposed rule is that the chain of custody could be compromised if so many people are handling ballots in our polling places on election night,” she said.
Paulding County Elections Director Deidre Holden said the cost of hiring additional staff to complete a manual count in a timely manner would be a burden, noting that there are 135,790 registered voters in Paulding.
“The additional cost to our county is $7,000 — it could be more depending on the number of ballots. Some counties will not be able to afford this due to their already strained budgets,” she said.
Michael Beach, who said he worked as a poll worker and deputy election supervisor in DeKalb County for nearly three years, called the proposed manual counting rule “duplicative and unnecessary.” Beach also said it would lead to human error and delays in announcing election results.
“We know that trust in elections is undermined when results are delayed. As poll workers in my constituency, we already check hourly for discrepancies between check-ins at polling stations, votes cast on touchscreens and vote counting on scanners,” he said.
“The United States has been mired in election chaos for four years, and the question is whether the election systems are secure,” Beach said. “Countless lawsuits and allegations have been filed, but ultimately these efforts have failed because, as the last four years have shown, there is no solid evidence.”
“Introducing more rules will never satisfy those who believe elections are not secure,” he added. “It only encourages more and more unnecessary and potentially harmful changes.”
More last-minute rules
The state election board last month passed a series of new rules that critics say create more problems than they solve.
Control of the five-member panel is clearly in the hands of three pro-Trump Republicans who form a majority vote. The trio of Janice Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares were praised by none other than former President Donald Trump himself at their rally in Atlanta on August 3.
The committee has already adopted rules that, among other things, authorize Georgia’s 159 county election offices to conduct “reasonable investigations” before certification. Critics say that tasking county election officials with conducting election investigations could be used to delay certification of results that a partisan committee may not like. The committee’s three-member, pro-Trump majority approved the rule on August 6.
Another rule passed on Monday requires mandatory signs at polling stations indicating that only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote – even though no non-citizens voted in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Of the 22 alleged voter fraud cases in Georgia that the conservative Heritage Foundation has tracked since 1997, only one case involved a voter who was illegally registered to vote – a Republican Party official.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported 1,634 cases in 2022 of potential non-citizens attempting to register as voters. But this audit confirmed that the measures currently in place to prevent non-citizens from registering to vote are actually working. “None of these individuals voted in the Georgia election,” the audit found.
In a statement last week, Raffensperger, a Republican, chided the committee for its “last-minute” and “activist” rulemaking. Like county election officials, he expressed concerns that the proposed hand-counting rule would undermine the security of ballots and that, combined with the new rule allowing county election officials to withhold certification of ballots, it would lead to delays that would undermine public confidence in the election.
Democrats are also pushing back against the rule changes. Former Fulton County Election Board Chair Cathy Woolard filed an ethics complaint against board members Johnston, King and Jeffares with Governor Brian Kemp on August 16, claiming they violated state law and that their actions “further their own political preferences.”
Woolard’s letter – first reported by Legal disputeby Anna Bower – also points out that Jeffares is vying for a position in a second Trump administration if the former president is re-elected.
State Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes, a Democrat who represents part of Gwinnett County, filed a formal complaint with Kemp on Aug. 19 demanding the firing of Johnston, King and Jeffares for violating the state’s ethics code and public meetings law.
In her complaint, she alleges that the rule allowing county election officials to delay certification of results constitutes election interference, and that the three board members “illegally colluded” with the Georgia Republican Party and held a “secret meeting” on July 12, violating the state’s Open Meetings Act.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMIT TO THESE RULE CHANGES?
- Contact Governor Brian Kemp’s office
- Attend and provide public comment at the next State Board of Elections meeting on September 20. Information on how to attend the meeting will be posted here closer to the meeting date.
