Why is Georgia hand counting ballots and how will it affect the 2024 election?

What does the new rule say?

The new rule requires three poll workers in each precinct to separate cast ballots into stacks of 50 and count them by hand. Each poll worker must count all the ballots until they arrive at the same total independently. They are counting the total number of ballots, not tallying the votes for candidates on the ballots. The count must either begin on election night or the next day.

Once all three workers reach the same total, they must sign a document that has the serial number on the ballot counting machine, election name and the time and date of the hand count. If the total number of ballots does not match the numbers on the poll pads used to check voters in, as well as the voting machine and scanners, the poll manager must immediately determine the reason for the inconsistency and correct it, if possible. The rule does not define what correcting any inconsistency will entail.

The rule only applies to ballots cast on election day. The state board of elections voted to put off considering a similar rule that would apply to early votes.

Why is this controversial?

Election officials across the state and voting rights groups have almost universally opposed the rule. They say that it is unnecessary, will delay the reporting of election results and opens the door to confusion and misinformation after voting has concluded.

“Misguided efforts to impose new procedures like hand counting ballots at polling locations make it likely that Georgians will not know the results on election night,” the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said in a statement in August. “Additionally, having poll workers handle ballots at polling locations after they have been voted introduces a new and significant risk to chain of custody procedures. 

“Efforts to change these laws by unelected bureaucrats on the eve of the election introduces the opportunity for error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud,” he said.

Polls in Georgia close at 7pm local time on election night and a new law in Georgia requires counties to report their early and mail-in votes by 8pm. But the hand count rule could mean that counties don’t report their election day votes until much later in the evening, leaving a lot of uncertainty about what’s going on, said Travis Doss, the executive director of the board of elections in Richmond county, Georgia.

“There’s the potential of it being perceived that the votes are not secure or not being accurate because of a potential delay,” said Doss, who is also the president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials.

His “biggest, biggest, biggest concern” is that the initial results at 8pm will show one candidate ahead, but then the results will switch as more votes come in. Several swings like this happened in 2020, and it continues to be fuel for people who believe the 2020 election was stolen.

“That’s when the conspiracy theorists are going to start saying that, well, that’s because they saw that the person was losing. And so now they have been, you know, making up votes, creating votes and whatnot.”

“That just creates a dead zone where folks say, well, they normally report results by now. We don’t see them yet. There must be something going on,” said Joseph Kirk, the election director in Bartow county. “No matter how many people are observing me, no matter how many, how transparent I am and what’s happening, people are going to believe there’s something wrong because stuff’s been delayed.”

The rule will likely result in a delay of reporting from smaller counties, who may not have the resources to have “runners” take memory cards from ballot scanners and bring them back to the central office for reporting soon after the polls close.

“Some counties have the infrastructure in place to bring the results back to the central office as soon as possible and have for years, but the majority of us do not and everything comes back at the same time,” Kirk said. He further added he didn’t plan on having election workers make multiple trips. “There won’t be any results from my polls until the hand count is complete at that location,” he said.

Election officials also say the hand count is unnecessary because they already regularly check that the number of voters checking in matches with the number of ballots being printed and tabulated. Precincts are also already required to have a person who stands at each scanner as a voter puts their ballot in, so if there was an issue with tabulation, they would catch it, Kirk said.

“Those numbers are checked and rechecked and verified all throughout the day to make sure that you know the numbers are matching up as they go,” Doss said. “It’s not open at 7am and then at 7pm all of a sudden a big surprise … it’s an ongoing thing where [equipment is] constantly being monitored to make sure that all the equipment is working properly and … the numbers are basically matching up throughout the day.”

Who supported the rule?

The hand-count rule was submitted to the board by Sharlene Alexander, a Republican on the local election board in Fayette county. Alexander has endorsed false election claims on her Facebook page, the Guardian has reported.

Alexander claimed that her county previously hand counted ballots. During presentations to the state elections board, she framed the change as a commonsense rule that would place a minimum burden on election workers.

The three members of the election board who supported the rule were the same ones who were publicly praised by Trump at a rally earlier this year.

What happens next?

Democrats have sued the state election board, saying that the board exceeded its authority in passing the rule. While the suit is pending, election officials in each of Georgia’s 159 counties are preparing to hand count the ballots, including ensuring they have additional staffing.