ATLANTA — Outrage erupted among local election advocates tonight following a last-minute meeting held by members of the Georgia State Board of Elections.
Advocates claim the meeting, scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday, occurred without proper public notice, and only three board members were physically present.
Board members said they needed to conduct the meeting on Tuesday to advance the business discussion. However, several people in attendance, including the Secretary of the Forsyth County Board of Elections, argued that the meeting should not have taken place at all.
Anita Tucker of the Forsyth County Elections Board voiced her frustration: "I was alerted by fellow activists. Did not know that this was going down.”
Three members of the Georgia State Board of Elections were physically present at the meeting, and one attended over the phone—an arrangement that Tucker found unacceptable.
“It feels like a lot of rules were either broken or stretched, and that's a concern,” she added.
Republican board member Janelle King, who was one of the three in attendance, told reporters, “We were just going to make sure that everybody knew we make sure we were in compliance and that we just want to close the meeting.”
King asserted that the public was notified via her social media account, although no notice appeared on the Secretary of State’s website.
King explained the urgency behind the meeting, stating, “We're doing this because we were notified that if we had not had this meeting today, then all the work that was done on July 9, by Monday, everything would have died.”
However, election advocates remained unconvinced. Kristin Nabors expressed her dismay, saying, “Like this was a meeting that was planned at the last minute without notice to consider rules that no one had seen.”
When asked for further clarification, King mentioned that two proposed rules were postponed to August to ensure that all board members could attend the discussions.
