Georgia Election Board rules ballots must be hand-counted

The Georgia Election Board ruled Friday that ballots must be hand-counted by local precincts despite concerns from election officials and opposition from some state officials. 

The Georgia Election Board ruled 3-2 to require ballots to be hand-counted — an added layer to the machine count that already takes place. The rule change comes less than 50 days before Election Day in a critical swing state.

Election workers and other members who spoke before the board voted on the rule change expressed concern that requiring the hand-counting of ballots would be cost-prohibitive and time-prohibitive, particularly as it comes near to the date of the election and could undermine trust in how elections are conducted.

Even members of the board expressed concern over the proposed rule change, noting opposition from within the election official community.

“The overwhelming number of election officials that have reached out to me have been opposed to this,” explained John Fervier, chair of the five-member board.

“There are several things that concern me about this. No. 1, I do think it’s too close to the election. I do,” he explained. “I think that it’s too late to train a lot of poll workers that have already started their training processes.”

Fervier also cited a lack of resources among the counties to properly carry out the rule change, and issues around chain of custody.

Prominent Republicans including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr have also previously raised concerns over the hand-counting of ballots.

Raffensperger signaled there could be a challenging road ahead after the rules were passed.

“Attorney General Chris Carr has stated that these rules would not withstand a legal challenge, and I have worked every day to strengthen Georgia’s election law to ensure our elections remain safe, secure, and free,”  Raffensperger said after the votes.

“Georgia voters can be confident that the reforms we’ve enacted since 2020 and have defended in court from frivolous attacks by Stacy Abrams will ensure only American citizens vote in our elections,” he continued. “Our reforms have made Georgia elections the safest in the nation and I work every day to keep it that way.”

Despite those concerns, three Trump-aligned members of the board voted for the rule changes. One of those members, Janelle King, suggested that accuracy was more important than timing.

“What I don’t want to do is set a precedent that we are OK with speed over accuracy,” she explained.

“I can guarantee you as a voter, I would rather wait another hour to ensure that the — that the count is accurate than to get a count or get a number within that hour, and then to find out at the close of an election, after certification’s” have already taken place “that we have people suing because the count was not accurate.”

Georgia is among a handful of swing states that will determine the path to the presidency this November. Donald Trump won the Peach State by 5 points in 2016, but he lost it to President Biden in 2020 by less than half a percentage point.

An aggregate of Georgia polls compiled by Decision Desk HQ shows Trump and Vice President Harris separated by just one-tenth of a percentage point, hovering around 48 percent support apiece.

Updated at 6:31 p.m. EDT