Pro-Trump Georgia election board votes to require hand counts of ballots

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Democracy in America
Pro-Trump Georgia election board votes to require hand counts of ballots

Critics plan to sue, saying the new requirement would almost certainly lead to errors and could disrupt the process of certifying the vote in a crucial battleground state.


Georgia's State Election Board members discuss proposals at the Capitol in Atlanta on Friday. (Mike Stewart/AP)

By Amy Gardner
September 20, 2024 at 12:04 p.m. EDT

ATLANTA -- The Georgia State Election Board approved a rule Friday requiring counties in the critical presidential battleground to hand-count all ballots this year, potentially upending the November election by delaying reporting of results by weeks if not months.

The change was spearheaded by a pro-Trump majority that has enacted a series of changes to the state's election rules in recent weeks and approved the hand-count requirement despite a string of public commenters who begged them not to. Critics included democracy advocates who accused the board of intentionally injecting chaos and uncertainty into the presidential contest as well as election supervisors and poll workers who said hand counts would take too long, cost money and almost certainly produce counting errors.

The board voted 3-2 to approve the measure, which would require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count in each precinct. The rule requires the hand count to take place the night of the November election or the next day. But dozens of election officials said that would be physically impossible in all but the smallest counties. Many also said in public comments Friday that it is far too late in the year to adopt new procedures for which their staffs have not been trained and for which they have no funds. ... "Military ballots have already been issued," said Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in south Georgia's Irwin County. "The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections."

The hand-count requirement was one of 11 rules expected to be voted on Friday, the latest batch the State Election Board has considered in recent weeks in an effort, proponents say, to make state elections more secure and transparent. The flurry is the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the presidential result this year. ... All three are supporters of former president Donald Trump, and the rules they are pushing have been promoted by the state's leading proponents of the false claim that President Joe Biden stole the Georgia election in 2020.

{snip}

By Amy Gardner
Amy Gardner has worked at The Post since 2005 and currently covers voting on its Democracy Team. She is part of the team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. She is a 1990 graduate of The University of Pennsylvania and lives in Arlington, Va., with her husband, Bob. They have two sons.follow on X @AmyEGardner

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/20/trump-georgia-election-board-hand-count-ballots/

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

[Miguelito Loveless]

1. This is guaranteed to screw up the Georgia count

You cannot hand count that many ballots accurately. Also, handling them repeatedly will damage the ballots, further calling into question their accuracy.

[Think. Again.]

6. That is the intention and the plan...

...to justify challenging the accuracy of the final count.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. archive.today link:

Pro-Trump Georgia election board votes to require hand counts of ballots

Critics plan to sue, saying the new requirement would almost certainly lead to errors and could disrupt the process of certifying the vote in a crucial battleground state.

By Amy Gardner
September 20, 2024 at 12:04 p.m. EDT

ATLANTA — The Georgia State Election Board approved a rule Friday requiring counties in the critical presidential battleground to hand-count all ballots this year, potentially upending the November election by delaying reporting of results by weeks if not months.

The change was spearheaded by a pro-Trump majority that has enacted a series of changes to the state’s election rules in recent weeks and approved the hand-count requirement despite a string of public commenters who begged them not to. Critics included democracy advocates who accused the board of intentionally injecting chaos and uncertainty into the presidential contest as well as election supervisors and poll workers who said hand counts would take too long, cost money and almost certainly produce counting errors.

The board voted 3-2 to approve the measure, which would require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count in each precinct. The rule requires the hand count to take place the night of the November election or the next day. But dozens of election officials said that would be physically impossible in all but the smallest counties. Many also said in public comments Friday that it is far too late in the year to adopt new procedures for which their staffs have not been trained and for which they have no funds.

“Military ballots have already been issued,” said Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in south Georgia’s Irwin County. “The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”

/snip

[Silent Type]

3. What I've read is that have to hand count the NUMBER of ballots to ensure it agrees with machine tablulated number of

ballots.

Don't have a problem with that. I suspect it has been done many times before as a way to ensure all ballots have been tablulated.

[LeftInTX]

9. Yes, but it's time involved that's the problem.

We had a small county do it in Texas for their GOP primary. It was a disaster. (Every ballot was a paper ballot and there was no machine backup). For the general, they are required to use machines.

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/19/texas-republican-hand-count-election/

I expect alot of errors and court cases in the GA case.

[Silent Type]

10. Think hand counting will help prevent some lawsuits. Judge we hand counted number of ballots at precinct, it was 2,463

ballots. We then looked at the machine count and found 2,463 ballots were tabulated . That confirmed all ballots completed at the precinct were included in the machine total.

Seems to me this is the correct way to ensure all ballots are counted. I still bet it has been done for years in most precincts/counties as a check on accuracy.

[thucythucy]

13. As was posted in another thread relating to the same topic:

Fulton County had 523,931 ballots cast in 2020

Dekalb County had 370,877 ballots cast

Cobb County had 394,022 ballots cast

Slightly more than "2,463."

And of course all the counties with the largest tallies lean Democratic.

So weeks after the election it'll be "Trump still leads in certified Georgia counties..."

"They know that this will be almost impossible and is solely intended to disrupt the certification of the election."

[Silent Type]

17. That's a precinct. Jeeez Christ, how fast do you think a clerk can count stack a ballots, not having to worry about the

Last edited Fri Sep 20, 2024, 04:28 PM - Edit history (1)

vote on the ballot?

I bet a clerk can count 1000 in a stack by just turning back corner in an hour. Then, another clerk confirms count. So in 5 hours a clerk could count 5000 ballot. So, let's call that 5000 in 5 hours for 2 clerks.

Now, let's take Fulton County since it is the largest. In 2020, about 10% of votes were cast on election day or roughly 57,000. Let's don't cut it too close, let's say 150,000 vote on election day in Fulton.

Thus, 60 Clerks would be more than sufficient to count that number in Fulton. Might could do it with 20 clerks, but 60 is a good number if we want to be cautious. Somehow, I think it can be handled in a county that hires several thousand poll workers.

Other facts used in above--

There are roughly 200 polling places in Fulton County on electron day. https://www.fultoncountyga.gov/-/media/Fulton-County-Election-Day-Polling-Locations---November-5-2024.pdf

Fulton County 2020 total votes cast-- 320,338 Early Voting; 148,673 Absentee voting.
https://www.fultoncountyga.gov/-/media/Project/FultonCountyGa/remos/elections/Nov-2020-Election-Summary-Report---WriteIn---Recount---Unofficial.ashx


Doesn't seem a real problem to me considering there are 2300+ polling places in Georgia. https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/07/17/heres-what-the-data-shows-about-polling-places-lines-in-georgias-primary

But I'm sure people are still gonna scream like it will undermine the election.

[forgotmylogin]

22. "hand count"

I would hope that means they can use something on the order of a page-counting machine that is run by hand - sort of like a money counter. It's outrageous that they would want to rely on someone thumbing through them and counting without mechanical assistance.

But that's what they want: Trump thinks the election should be over when the polls close, but this will take weeks if not months.

[Silent Type]

23. A DUer posted awhile ago that they "hand counted" ballots in Gwinnett County last election and

were through by midnight. It’s not a big deal. But we’ll be sure to pound it until voters fear their votes won’t count, so they stay home.

[Turbineguy]

4. "... lead to errors and could disrupt the process of certifying the vote..."

Isn't that the reason for doing it?

[MichMan]

5. I recall lots of support here for it in 2016

[Dennis Donovan]

7. Greg Bluestein from AJC:

Link to tweet

Greg Bluestein
The pro-Trump majority on the State Election Board in Georgia adopts a rule that Democrats and key Republicans have warned could spark chaos, could cause delays in posting results and is being enacted too close to the election. Expect more legal challenges. #gapol

Sam Levine
Breaking news: The Georgia State Election board approves a rule to require election workers to hand count ballots on election night. The vote was 3-2.

[ga_girl]

8. I don't think the hand count / organization will be much of an impact

Experience: Assistant Precinct Manager in Gwinnett (two scanners), Advanced In Person voting in Gwinnett (Shorty Howell with four scanners)

There's a lot that goes on during shutdown procedures in Gwinnett and Georgia. Pulling the paper ballots from the scanners is a nuisance task. Someone has to get down on the floor, remove the unorganized ballots from the scanner and then organize them in some sense of order - after all they're not laying flat in the scanner. The ballots need to be aligned in order to fit in the ballot return bag, so half the battle is done anyways. Counting, and making sure the scanner counts and ballot counts agree, is a necessary task - mainly because you don't want to miss any paper ballots.

While someone is doing the ballot management, other poll workers are taking down the machines, putting equipment in cages, completing the provisional ballot paperwork, closing out the poll pads, logging security tag numbers, removing signage from the walls, returning the facility to a before election state. It takes at least an hour and more like two just to close everything down. Counting the ballots can be accomplished in that time frame.

[Mz Pip]

11. Hand counting ballots

might result in numbers being slightly off but I can’t imagine it would result in any numbers so far off as to skew the election, but I suspect the GOP wants to delay certification of the vote so they can complain about fraud.

[bluestarone]

12. Just wondering if Kemp made any decisions about this

PRO tRUMP election board? Did i miss anything about that?

[GoreWon2000]

14. bushthief opposed hand counts in 2000

Such repug hypocrisy. bushthief publicly opposed hand counts in 2000 in Florida because it meant victory for Al Gore and despite the fact that 10,000 mostly repug absentee ballots that the counting machines couldn't read were in fact hand duplicated and counted as Florida law allowed.in 2000 and now the repugs want all votes hand counted in 2024. Repug hypocrisy continues to sink to ever lower lows.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

15. If T***p doesn't win, can he demand a hand recount, like in 2020?

I hope the GA courts step in and throw out this last-minute rule change. Since this a vote for the president -- a federal office -- isn't there some sort of requirement for how the election is run? I know the state can set up elections the way they want for state positions.

[ga_girl]

19. Hand count? Probably not

There were a couple of unique circumstances for the November 2020 election in Georgia, and the hand count that was done. First, while not the first election performed on the Dominion hardware, it was the first presidential election with a higher voter turnout. The hardware was new and the few elections performed on it were relatively smaller (party primaries and runoffs). The hand count was done as a validation of the machine count and was put in place by Secretary of State Raffensperger. Trump then asked for, and got, a machine recount.

I don't remember the counts between election day machine count, hand count, and machine recount, but the totals were very close to each other. There have been other risk limiting audits done throughout the state, on small / medium / large counties.

https://sos.ga.gov/page/2020-general-election-risk-limiting-audit

[slightlv]

16. While hand counting number of ballots sounds reasonable,

I see it as a Trojan Horse for the Repugs. Remember Florida in 2000? This is a setup to repeat that process. T never does anything new on his own, he always copies something that's already been done or what someone else goads him into doing.

You can bet there will be a problem in hand counting ballots in any and/or all states where the R's get this mandated. So much chaos will ensue that the SCOTUS will say they have no other option but to do what they did in 2000 and declare the winner. And of course, we know who they'll seat as Prez. This is my worst fear, and everything the R's are doing to interfere with the election process seems to head towards that direction. Most others think it'll be throw it to the House, but because that's not got as modern a record, even that would end up in SCOTUS.

[mdbl]

21. Yes, all of SCROTUS's unethical behavior would be ok if Dump is Prez.

So they will do their best to keep law abiding citizens out of positions of power.

[Grins]

18. Yeah; good luck hand counting millions of ballots.

Stupid on a colossal scale.

[mdbl]

20. I guess Joe Biden can just settle in and plan to say in the White house awhile

While dumb GA sits around hand counting ballots for a few months.

[riversedge]

24. The board also passed a new rule giving poll-watchers access to more of the election process, including vote-counting

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/politics/georgia-republican-election-rules-hand-count/index.html

................ The board also passed a new rule giving poll-watchers access to more of the election process, including vote-counting tabulation areas.

The new rule for tabulation centers was proposed by Julie Adams, a Georgia conservative who is known for peddling conspiracies about election workers and now serves on the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections in Georgia’s largest county.

The state attorney general’s office previously said that poll-watcher rule “seeks to expand the enumerated locations where poll watchers may be designated beyond those places identified in the statute,” and would therefore likely be overturned if challenged in court.