By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) – Georgia’s Republican-controlled state election board may vote on Friday to authorize a labor-intensive hand count of potentially millions of ballots in the November election, a measure that voting rights advocates say could cause delays, introduce errors and lay the groundwork for false election challenges.
If the manual count is approved, Georgia would be the only state in the U.S. to implement such a requirement as part of the normal process of tallying results, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning public policy institute.
Georgia is one of seven crucial states likely to determine the Nov. 5 battle between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The state’s five-member board has pushed through a raft of election law changes in recent months, led by three conservative members praised by Trump.
Civil rights groups say the changes could allow rogue county election officials to delay or deny certification of election results, throwing the state’s voting system into chaos. Democrats have filed a lawsuit challenging two of the certification rules, and a state judge has scheduled a non-jury trial for Oct. 1.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, which represents county election officials, called on the board this week to delay additional amendments until 2025, noting that mail ballots have already been sent to overseas voters and military personnel.
The group also said it opposed the manual count proposal for several reasons, including “the rule’s potential to delay results, set tired workers up for failure, and undermine the trust the rule’s author says he wants to achieve.”
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, has voiced similar concerns, saying it would increase “the potential for errors, lost or stolen ballots and fraud.”
The hand-count proposal is one of nearly a dozen new rules the board will discuss Friday. All of the approved rules would go into effect in mid-October, just as early voting begins and after mail voting starts.
In a letter to the board this week, Charlene McGowan, Raffensperger’s general counsel, wrote, “It is far too late in the election process for counties to implement new rules and procedures, and many poll workers have already completed their required training.” She also said that at least some of the rules under consideration would illegally undermine Raffensperger’s authority.
Trump faces criminal charges for pressuring Georgia authorities to overturn his 2020 election loss, though he denies wrongdoing. He has continued to make false claims about the legitimacy of the U.S. election, prompting conservative activists and lawmakers across the country to push new voting limits in the name of preventing fraud.
The manual count rule would require three poll workers in each of the state’s 6,500-plus precincts to open sealed boxes of ballots that have been scanned by machines and conduct a manual count. The counting would begin immediately on Election Night.
A separate rule would impose the same requirement on any ballot box in which more than 1,500 ballots are collected by the end of the day during early voting, which begins Oct. 15.
In 2020, approximately five million votes were cast in the presidential election across the state, more than half of which were cast through early voting.
Some states use manual counts when conducting recounts in close elections or as part of routine post-election audits, said Mark Lindeman, director of policy and strategy for Verified Voting, which supports the responsible use of technology in elections. A handful of small jurisdictions use manual counts instead of voting machines.
Supporters of the manual count say it makes voting machines more accurate.
“It’s simply a matter of making sure the electronic file matches the ballots,” board member Janice Johnston said at a board meeting last month.
Proponents of voting rights say it would actually have the opposite effect.
“It reduces the security for people to open those boxes, take out the ballots and sort them into piles,” Ramachandran said. “You can easily imagine someone accidentally losing a pile or forgetting to put a pile in the box.”
Georgia already has robust procedures in place to ensure an accurate count, experts said, including comparing the number of ballots scanned, the number of ballots printed and the number of voters who sign. In addition, the state conducts post-election audits to check for errors.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)
