Democrats Sue Georgia Election Board Over New Ballot Rule

A worker carries a bin of ballots to be scanned at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta on Jan. 5, 2021. Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images

National and state Democrats are suing the Georgia Election Board to stop a new rule that requires workers to hand count ballots in the upcoming presidential election.

In a filing released on Sept. 30, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia said the rule is illegal because the board only has the authority to promulgate regulations that are “conducive to the fair, legal, and orderly conduct of primaries and elections” and “obtain uniformity.”

Approved by the board on Sept. 20, the rule requires workers to hand count ballots to confirm that the number of ballots matches the number generated by machines.

If the new rule is allowed to take effect, “the general election will not be orderly and uniform—large counties will face significant delays in reporting vote counts, election officials will struggle to implement new procedures at the last minute, poll workers will not have been trained on the new rule because it was adopted too late, and the security of the ballots themselves will be put at risk,” Democrats allege.

The suit, set to be lodged in the Superior Court of Fulton County, notes that the attorney general and secretary of state of Georgia both opposed the rule. The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said that the rule likely exceeded the board’s authority and appeared “to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections.”

Members of the election board did not respond to requests for comment on the legal action by publication time.

Democrats are asking the court to invalidate the rule and permanently block it.

The rule, approved by a 3–2 vote, requires the hand count to be done before the election is certified.

“I can guarantee you, as a voter, I would rather wait another hour to ensure that the count is accurate than to get a count, or to get a number, within that hour, and then to find out at the close of an election, after certification has already taken place, that we have people suing because the count was not accurate,” Janelle King, one of the members who voted for the rule, said before the board voted on it.

Sara Tindall Ghazal, one of the members who voted against the rule, cited the number of election officials who said it should not be implemented. The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials is among the groups that expressed opposition.

Ghazal also expressed concerns that the board was possibly overstepping its authority.