(SRN NEWS/AP) – Georgia’s State Election Board on Friday voted to approve a new rule that requires poll workers to count the number of paper ballots by hand after voting is completed.
The board approved the rule, going against the advice of the state attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office and an association of county election officials. Three board members who were praised by former President Donald Trump during a rally last month in Atlanta voted to approve the measure, while the lone Democrat on the board and the nonpartisan chair voted to reject it.
In a memo sent to election board members Thursday, the office of state Attorney General Chris Carr said no provision in state law allows counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level before the ballots are brought to county election superintendent for vote tallying. As a result, the memo says, the rule is “not tethered to any statute” and is “likely the precise kind of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do.”
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last month called the hand counting rule “misguided,” saying it would delay the reporting of election results and introduce risks to chain of custody procedures.
The new rule requires that the number of paper ballots — not the number of votes — be counted at each polling place by three separate poll workers until all three counts are the same. If a scanner has more than 750 ballots inside at the end of voting, the poll manager can decide to begin the count the following day.
There’s more on this story here: Georgia State Election Board approves rule requiring hand count of ballots – SRN News