By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) - Georgia's Republican-controlled state election board may vote on Friday to require a labor-intensive hand count of potentially millions of ballots in November's election, a move voting rights advocates say could cause delays, introduce errors and lay the groundwork for spurious election challenges.
If approved, the hand count rule would make Georgia the only state in the U.S. to implement such a requirement as part of the normal process of tabulating results, according to Gowri Ramachandran, the director of elections and security at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning public policy institute.
Georgia is one of seven battleground states likely to determine the Nov. 5 contest between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The state's five-member board has passed a slew of election law changes in recent months, powered by three conservative members praised by Trump.
Civil rights groups say those changes could allow rogue county election board members to delay or deny certification of election results, throwing the state's vote into chaos. Democrats have filed a lawsuit challenging two of the certification rules, and a state judge has scheduled a non-jury trial for Oct. 1.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, which represents county election officials, urged the board this week to table additional amendments until 2025, noting that absentee ballots have already been sent to overseas and military voters.
The group also said it opposed the hand count proposal for several reasons, including "the rule's potential to delay results; set fatigued employees up for failure; and undermine the very confidence the rule's author claims to seek."
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state's top election official, has raised similar objections, saying it would introduce "the opportunity for error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud."
The hand count proposal is among nearly a dozen new rules the board is scheduled to discuss on Friday. Any regulations approved would take effect in mid-October, just as early voting begins and after mail-in balloting has started.
In a letter to the board this week, Raffensperger's general counsel, Charlene McGowan, wrote, "It is far too late in the election process for counties to implement new rules and procedures, and many poll workers have already completed their required training." She also said at least some of the rules under consideration would illegally usurp Raffensperger's authority.
Trump faces criminal charges accusing him of pressuring Georgia officials to reverse his 2020 election loss, though he denies wrongdoing. He has continued to advance false claims about the legitimacy of U.S. elections, prompting conservative activists and lawmakers across the country to push new voting limits in the name of preventing fraud.
The hand count rule would require three poll workers in each of the state's more than 6,500 precincts to open the sealed boxes of ballots scanned by machines and conduct a hand count, starting as soon as election night.
A separate rule would impose the same requirement for any ballot box that collects more than 1,500 ballots by the end of the day during early voting, which starts on Oct. 15.
In 2020, approximately five million votes were cast in the presidential race statewide, more than half in early voting.
Some states use hand counts when conducting recounts in close elections, or as part of routine post-election audits, said Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director for Verified Voting, which supports the responsible use of technology in elections. A handful of tiny jurisdictions use hand counts in place of voting machines.
Supporters of the hand count rule say it would ensure the ballot-scanning machines were accurate.
"It is simply assuring the reconciliation of the electronic record to the ballots," board member Janice Johnston said during a board meeting last month.
Voting rights advocates say it would have the opposite effect.
"It's decreasing the security for people to open those boxes, take the ballots out and sort them into piles," Ramachandran said. "You could easily imagine someone accidentally losing a stack or forgetting to put a stack into the box."
Georgia already has robust procedures in place to ensure an accurate count, experts said, including comparing the number of ballots scanned, the number of ballots printed and the number of voters who sign on. In addition, the state conducts post-election audits to check for any errors.