During the last three months, the members of Georgia’s Republican-led State Election Board have approved a contentious set of measures that may challenge decades of legal precedent.
For a battleground state already awash in election integrity misinformation, the decisions have alarmed citizens and election administrators alike.
Lawsuits have been filed to reverse the decisions. In the meantime, here’s what voters need to know about what these measures mean for them and how we got here.
1. What are the new measures?
There are two rulings from the state board which have caused the most concern for the county officials who actually run Georgia’s elections.
The first measure, approved July 12, gives local election boards the right to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into results before certifying the election, although the decision does not define what that means.
The second measure, approved September 20, called for all ballots cast in Georgia to be counted by hand by county officials in each precinct before votes are tabulated and certified in each of Georgia’s 159 counties.
As of writing, there are approximately 8.2 million people registered to vote in Georgia.
2. What’s the concern?
Georgians who have been running fair and credible elections for years were taken aback when the state board started discussing these measures. In August, when former president Donald Trump celebrated Republican members of the State Election Board by name, concern grew nationwide.
From the beginning, there were three central issues with the measures
Inadequate Timing: The state board’s actions have given counties only several weeks to change their time-honored and tested procedures, and no money to pay for the changes.
Ambiguous writing: The state board has not defined key terms within its decisions. Like what would entail a “reasonable inquiry,” opening up the possibility of delays, inconsistencies, and partisan interference.
Muddying the legal waters: Finally — perhaps most seriously — the Georgia State Election Board is not a legislative body. The members are appointed, not elected. Under Georgia state law, they are supposed to administer state election law, not change it.
3. What’s being done to push back?
Both Georgia’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger advised the members that they did not have jurisdiction to make policy changes.
The board approved the measures anyway.
On Aug. 15, Raffensperger’s office put out a statement calling the board’s moves “11th Hour Chaos.”
“Activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures outside of the legislative process undermine voter confidence and burden election workers,” said Raffensperger.
“Georgia voters reject this 11th hour chaos, and so should the unelected members of the State Election Board.”
Soon after, a Republican-backed lawsuit was filed, citing the board’s overreach of their jurisdiction and the negative consequences should the measures be upheld.
Scot Turner, a Republican and former Georgia state representative who served from 2013 to 2020, filed the lawsuit through his project Eternal Vigilance Action.
“The Democrats like to use the word sowing the seeds for chaos, but I’m having a hard time seeing where they’re wrong on this,” Turner told The Current.
“We need to embrace actual conservatism and work with whoever we need to in order to preserve the founding principles of our country.”
Shortly after, the NAACP and Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda intervened in support.
There are also two major Democratic lawsuits.
Both involve the Democratic National Committee and Georgia Democratic Party and are backed by Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. These oppose both the certification measures and the hand-count measures, arguing that the board “exceeded its rulemaking authority.”
4. What are counties doing in the meantime?
Local counties don’t have the luxury of waiting to see how judges will rule on the measures.
Chris Channell is the director of the Glynn County Board of Elections, running elections there since 2017, is preparing for the worst case scenario by hiring three additional poll workers per precinct. With 17 precincts, that’s over 51 new poll workers who need to be hired, compensated and trained. He estimates that will cost thousands of dollars in a cash-strapped county that is already struggling to pay police officers and other core public servants.
What’s more, Channell’s having to do this after the deadline to train their poll workers has already passed.
Channell says the state board decisions contradict what its leaders said was the goal of the measures — to increase the safety of the elections.
“I was just disappointed that the State Election Board won’t listen to the local elections officers,” Channell told The Current. “They say, you know, during the state election board that they think it’s going to increase the transparency in the election and from my perspective, it does not increase the transparency. It does not increase the integrity of the election.”
5. What’s next?
The hearings for these lawsuits begin in earnest in the coming weeks.
Many legal scholars believe these State Election Board measures will not survive their legal challenges.
So why did the State Election Board create all the drama to begin with?
Susannah Goodman, Director of Election Security for Common Cause, believes it has to do with an underlying desire to destabilize our collective belief in our elections.
“I think the through line is trying to sow doubt into the final election results. Setting it up to say, ‘If I didn’t win, it’s because it wasn’t fair.’ I think that is the game plan,” Goodman said.
Much of this destabilization can be traced to former president Trump, from his current approval of the board’s measures to his initial response to the 2020 election.
All of which are colored by newly unsealed evidence about his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2020, riots.
“I think there is a lot of anxiety heading into this race. I think it is extremely close. And I think all of this pre-election rulemaking and litigation is really a reflection of that,” said Goodman.
But not all is lost.
But even if Georgians end up counting ballots the old fashioned way – the drama of what unfolded here tells us something.
It demonstrates how the legacy of election denial at the highest level can cloud our systems, disrupt our chains of command, and create conflict about the things that Americans agree on most–that free and fair elections are our basic right.
With the legal challenges and rising bipartisan calls against the measures, Goodman is hopeful.
“I really do have confidence in the state election directors around the country to perform their solemn duty and to run this election in a fair and transparent way so that the will of the voters is ascertained,” said Goodman.
