The Georgia State Election Board approved a new on rule on Friday, which will require all paper ballots to be counted by hand for the election in November.
The rule will require three poll officers to independently count each box of ballots. Any discrepancies found between the hand count and recorded totals are required to be documented and resolved by the poll manager. The purpose of the new rule is to “ensure the secure, transparent, and accurate counting of ballots by requiring a systematic process where ballots are independently hand-counted by three sworn poll officers”.
Until this rule was approved, less than 0.2% of registered voters in the US were subject to hand counting of ballots, most living in single-precinct municipalities. Hand counting ballots can be time consuming and expensive, according to Verified Voting. In 2021, Mesa County, Colorado hand counted ballots for the general election, paying approximately $80,000 for one week of work.
Georgia is currently the only state in the U.S. to implement a hand counting rule.
The Campaign Legal Center criticized the new rule, stating that hand counting is unnecessarily time consuming and creates room for human error.
In 2022, Campaign Legal Center stated that:
Replacing voting machines with hand counts as the main way of counting votes would weaken the electoral system by introducing a greater degree of human error into the process. This would increase the time needed to process ballots, count votes and report accurate election results, increasing opportunities for politicians who want to sow distrust in our elections and rig the rules of the game to work in their favor.
The Georgia State Election Board, which consists of five members, is tasked with a variety of responsibilities surrounding the “protection of the precious right to cast a ballot”. These tasks include promulgating rules and regulations to promote uniformity and legality in election practices and taking such other actions deemed necessary to ensure “fair, legal and orderly elections”.
