The Republican-controlled State Election Board Friday approved a controversial change in election rules requiring counties to hand-count the number of ballots cast at polling places on Election Day.

The proposal passed 3-2 despite objections from the Georgia attorney general’s office, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, local election officials, Democrats and voting-rights groups.

Many counties hand-counted the number of ballots cast in the 2020 election without any complaints, said Sharlene Alexander, a former assistant poll manager in Fayette County. Hand-counting without actually tabulating the results can be done without taking a lot of time, Alexander said.

“I don’t understand why this big uproar is going on,” she said.

But opponents argued that changing the hand-count rule so close to this year’s election is part of a concerted effort by Republicans in Georgia to sow chaos and confusion, potentially delaying the results and helping former President Donald Trump secure the state’s 16 electoral votes whether or not he wins the popular vote in the Peach State.

“Counting thousands of ballots by hand will be incredibly tenuous, expensive and possibly error-prone process,” said Kristin Nabers, state director for All Voting is Local Action, a group that advocates expanding voter access. “Any human errors can be exploited by election deniers to sow distrust and decrease confidence in our elections.”

Senior Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Young questioned the State Election Board’s statutory authority to make such a rules change.

“These proposed rules purport to amend provisions to allow for hand-counting ballots at the precinct level, which would appear to occur prior to submission to the election superintendent and consolidation and tabulation of the votes,” Young wrote in a letter to board Chairman John Fervier dated Thursday. “However, the statutes upon which these rules rely do not reflect any provision enacted by the General Assembly.”

Raffensperger, who has called the State Election Board a “mess,” also has warned that changing election rules so close to the start of early voting next month and Election Day Nov. 5 could delay the tabulation of results.

“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 following Friday’s vote.

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials weighed in this week with a letter to board members objecting to changing the rule on hand-counting ballots, citing its potential to “delay results, set fatigued employees up for failure, and undermine the very confidence the rule’s author claims to seek.”

“The pro-Trump Election Board’s newest changes passed today seem meant to create a fail point in our system — it’s a perfect illustration of the MAGA operation’s strategy to sow doubt and chaos, and upend the 2024 election,” added Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight, a voting rights group founded by two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams.

“But it won’t work. We the people of Georgia have the power to stop them. By turning out in huge numbers too big to cry fraud, we can protect our freedom and ensure the choice of the voters, not the election deniers, prevails.”

But board member Janice Johnston, one of the three Republicans on the board who supported the rules change, dismissed arguments that it’s coming too close to the election. She cited past instances where the board approved rules changes close to Election Day.

Janelle King, another GOP board member who voted for the proposal, said getting a correct count is worth any delays at the precinct level on Election Night.

“I don’t want to see a precedent where we’re OK with speed over accuracy,” she said. 

Capitol Beat is a nonprofit news service operated by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Georgia. For more information visit capitol-beat.org (http://capitol-beat.org/).