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 a critical presidential election in a key 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 Fevrier, 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."
Fevrier also cited lack of resources among the counties to properly carry out the rule change and issues around chain of custody.
Prominent Republicans like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr have also previously raised concerns over the hand-counting of ballots.
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 okay with speed over accuracy," she explained.
"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 certifications" already taken place "that we have people suing because the count was not accurate."
Georgia is among a handful of key swing states that will determine the path to the presidency this November. Georgia went for Donald Trump in 2016 by 5 points, but he later 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 largely tied at roughly 48 percent each.
Updated: 2:22 p.m. ET