The Georgia State Election Board has approved a new rule which will require poll workers to hand count ballots, despite a warning from the Georgia Attorney General’s Office that such a rule likely exceeds the board’s authority. The 3-2 vote Friday, Sept. 20, was part of a series of votes on about a dozen rules that pertained to absentee ballots, ballot chain of custody and partisan poll watchers.
The change comes 46 days before the general election and a little more than three weeks before early voting begins.
Critics said the new rule will unnecessarily delay election tabulation, and warned of possible mistakes by exhausted poll workers.
“On election day, I start at 5:30 in the morning and maybe finish by 9:30 pm, by which time my brain and I are pretty much mush,” Chatham County Poll Manager Barbara Gooby said. “To hand count the ballots we would need the following resources: time to rest between election day and hand counting, pay for all additional hours worked, magnifiers because the print on the ballots is teensy, someone to guard each precinct and ballot box when we’re not there.”
Gooby said they would also need security for when workers are there and training on the specifics of the hand counting process.
Others said they thought the rules could help build confidence in election results.
“I’ll stay till the, as long as it takes to count those ballots and make our elections more better,” Richard Schroeder, a Georgia poll worker, told the board.
The chairman of the Election Board warned his fellow members against approving the rule.
“I want to make on the record that we’ll be going against the advice of our legal counsel by voting in the affirmative,” Chairman John Fervier told his colleagues.
“You are welcoming lawsuits. Lawsuits that will be dismissed,” Board member Janelle King responded. “I just read in our code what we can and can’t do, undisputed. I just want to be on record that I really am getting a little tired of encouraging lawsuits.”
The board was warned by the Republican State Attorney General’s Office that its proposed rules go beyond their authority and “will likely be subject to an easy legal challenge.”
The attorney general’s office wrote of the hand counting proposal, “These proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do.”
As the meeting continued, the board decided to wait to vote on at least one other rule until after the election.
