Georgia State Election Board passes controversial rule opposed by many local officials

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This story was updated to add new information.

The Georgia State Election Board passed a controversial measure Friday requiring local precincts to conduct hand counts for the November election and confirm the figures match machine counts before certifying election results.

The rule was one of several proposals under consideration Friday as three Trump-approved Republican members – who have made up the board’s majority since May – continue to entertain a flurry of proposals to change the state’s election processes in the final months before November. Those three members passed the rule despite being advised by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, that the board would likely be unlawfully usurping the power of the state legislature, according to board Chairman John Fervier.

“We know the legislature is not shy of passing laws,” Fervier said. “This board needs to take seriously the guidance that we’ve received from the attorney general, from the secretary of state’s office, and from the election professionals across the state.”

Election board member Janelle King, who backed the rule, accused Fervier of “welcoming lawsuits” – which she said will be dismissed – through his comments.

Former President Donald Trump has publicly praised King and two of her fellow board members, Janice Johnston and Rick Jeffares, as “pit bulls” fighting for “victory.”

State officials protest board’s actions

USA TODAY obtained a copy of Carr’s Thursday-dated letter to the board, in which he said the hand-counting rule is “likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do.”

More generally, Carr said any new rules about how to conduct elections “are disfavored when implemented as close to an election as the rules on the September 20 agenda.” 11 proposed rules were on the board’s agenda ahead of Friday.

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, a nonpartisan group of more than 500 Georgia officials and staff, also expressed concern in a Tuesday letter about many of the last-minute proposals.

Election officials are training thousands of poll workers daily across the state and are already working to educate the public on what to expect throughout the voting process and beyond,” the group wrote. “We respectfully ask that these proposed rules, and any other petitions for rulemaking, be tabled until 2025.”

The proposed hand-counting rule, in particular, could delay results, set fatigued employees up to fail, and “undermine the very confidence the rule’s author claims to seek,” according to the election officials.

The election board members didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment ahead of the Friday meeting. Previously, King told USA TODAY her mission is “to ensure that every vote is counted accurately and every election is conducted correctly going forward.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, raised his own concerns at an election-related forum Thursday, saying there are 2,400 precincts in Georgia that would need to comply with the hand-counting proposal, which he said would create delays in receiving results and jeopardize the security of the paper ballots.

“Ninety days before an election, you should not institute major changes to the election process,” Raffensperger said. “The more moving parts you have, the more chance you have to fail.”

Friday meeting opens with another dispute

Friday’s meeting opened with more contentiousness as board Chairman John Fervier was overruled by the three Trump-approved Republican members over whether to add another petition to the day’s agenda, in addition to 11 proposed rule changes and multiple other petitions already scheduled for consideration.

Board member Janice Johnston proposed the addition, saying her colleagues could review it later at the lunch break and that it regards “storage of returns.”

Fervier, who was appointed by Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to his nonpartisan role, objected that the board hadn’t had time to get guidance on the petition from the public, the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, or the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, and he wouldn’t add it.

But Johnston made a motion to overrule him and was quickly supported by her colleagues Janelle King and Rick Jeffares, who outvoted Fervier and Democratic board member Sara Tindall Ghazal.

“Waiting even until (the next meeting) is time wasted and of concern that again, there will be a howl of voices that it is too late to accept this or adopt it or implement it for this current election,” Johnston said.

Controversial last-minute changes

The board has already been taking heat for rules passed in August that critics fear could delay certification and cause chaos.

However, proponents of recent changes say they are designed to ensure accuracy and boost public confidence in the system.

Former Virginia Attorney General and Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli, for example, spoke at the election board’s Aug. 19 meeting in defense of a rule requiring counties to investigate even minor discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters in a precinct before certifying results.

“If more ballots show up than voters, good grief, I would think anybody would want to flag and solve that problem as soon as possible,” he said.

The Georgia Democratic Party has sued the board over two rules passed in August that it fears could prevent election results from being certified on time. One rule requires counties to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results. The other is the same rule Cuccinelli defended. The lawsuit focuses on a portion of the rule that allows local election board officials to examine election-related documentation created through running the election.

Georgia Democrats want a judge to instruct local officials that the state’s certification deadlines are mandatory, even after the rules. A state judge has scheduled a trial for Oct. 1 to resolve the issue quickly.

Public weighs in at meeting

The board members heard more than an hour of public comments Friday morning before they were set to hear presentations and vote on proposed rules. Commenters largely criticized the proposed changes.

Kristin Nabers, the Georgia state director for a nonpartisan voting rights organization, All Voting is Local, said she has personally watched multiple counties conduct full hand counts and every time there has been an error, it’s been a human error rather than a machine problem or voter malfeasance.

“People doing a hand count are going to make mistakes, which can then be exploited to spread lies and sow further distrust in our elections and our election officials,” Nabers said.

Democratic Georgia state congresswoman Saira Draper said she thought many of the election professionals who were weighing in had mistakenly presumed the majority board members were approaching the late-in-the-game election proposals in good faith, and so had spoken about their operational, logistical, and practical concerns.

“I think what is happening is we are setting up our counties to fail,” Draper said. “And when these counties fail, when there are inaccuracies, if there is a result of the election that some of the members of this board do not like, they will be able to point to those inaccuracies, and they will say that this is – that the election is inaccurate, that there is a lack of integrity in the election.”

Julia Adams, a Republican on Atlanta’s Fulton County Election Board who refused to certify results in the May primary election, defended rule changes coming from the board’s majority. She analogized the hand-counting proposal to double-checking the cash a bank issues.

“A machine is going to count the thousand dollars, the teller is going to hand count to make sure it’s $1,000, and you … are going to count and make sure it’s $1,000,” she said.