Georgia fight over election rules resurfaces in last-minute legislation

ATLANTA (AP) — A bill before a Georgia Senate committee Wednesday could allow a Donald Trump-aligned state board to strike thousands of challenged voters from the state’s rolls and would require polling officials to count the number of ballots by hand.

The 26-page House Bill 397 is a wish list from Republicans, including three GOP members who control the State Election Board. The board adopted a series of rules amid intense scrutiny last year, only to see a state court judge throw out most of them, finding that the board had overreached its legal authority. An appeal of that ruling was argued last week before the Georgia Supreme Court.

Supporters of the bill say poll workers need to make sure the number of ballots collected on Election Day matches the total counted by ballot-scanning machines and that the State Election Board needs to hear appeals of challenged voters because counties are turning down thousands of challenges.

The bill would also try to force the state to leave the Electronic Records Information Center, a multistate group that tries to maintain accurate voter rolls. Some question the funding and motives of the group.

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Officials who work for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger warned the Senate Ethics Committee during a Wednesday hearing that if Georgia joins nine other Republican-controlled states in leaving ERIC, it would undermine the state’s ability to maintain its voter rolls.

“We firmly believe in using every tool available to us,” said Charlene McGowan, the chief lawyer for Raffensperger’s office.

County election officials warned that a requirement to count by hand the number of ballots, although not individual votes, could lead to delays in reporting results on election night and mistakes by tired workers, as well as compromise ballot security. That’s even though some counties in Georgia conducted hand counts until a few years ago.

“We want full control of those ballots at all times. We want them locked in secure containers and brought back to our office as soon as possible,” said Rebecca Anglin, elections director for Greene County, east of Atlanta.

Finally, opponents questioned whether the State Election Board can adequately or fairly hear appeals of voter challenges. Republican activists challenged more than 63,000 voters statewide last summer. Many of those people have moved away. But most challenges were rejected because county election boards said federal law bars them from removing inactive voters until multiple years elapse.

Don Hackney, a retired Atlanta lawyer, said such appeals belong in court, where they go now, and should not be handled by “a non-elected partisan appointed board” that is “completely ill-equipped to handle the avalanche of challenges.”

What was a plain-vanilla bill when it passed the House went through two drafts this week before it was rolled out Wednesday. More changes are likely before the committee votes on the bill as early as Thursday. The rewritten version would then have to pass the full Senate and House before it could go to Gov. Brian Kemp. The timing makes it unlikely any final vote could be taken before the last two days of the session next week.

The bill seeks to put into law a number of rejected State Election Board rules. The hand-count proposal is the most prominent, but other changes would allow increased access to partisan-appointed poll watchers and require counties to post more statistics about absentee ballots online.

The bill doesn’t put everything the board wanted into law. For example, it doesn’t include a rule adopted in August requiring a “reasonable inquiry” before a county election board could certify results as final. Critics said that rule could allow counties to refuse to certify some or all election results, meaning votes could be discarded.

The measure also includes other things Republicans want, like a ban on counties opening election offices the weekend before the election to let voters hand-deliver ballots. State and federal judges slapped down Republican lawsuits to block the practice last November

Other items cater to Republicans’ continuing distrust of the election system, like requiring live video surveillance at night of ballot drop boxes that are already emptied and then padlocked shut inside government buildings closed to the public.