ATLANTA — Georgia's State Election Board voted on Tuesday to endorse three publicly-submitted rules for formalized rulemaking, including one that would require a hand count at the end of voting days to verify the vote totals given by machines.
Two other rules also passed, one concerning steps local election boards may take before certifying election results and another requiring public reconciliation reports for vote totals.
The votes Tuesday initiated rulemaking procedures and they would have to go through further steps before formally being set into place.
With a 3-1 vote, the board voted to forward a rule submitted by Sharlene Alexander, a Fayette County election board member. The rule would amend SEB Rule 183-1-1-.01 (3) to require three people at a polling precinct to "independently count the total number of ballots" and see that they align with the machine totals.
The proposed rule continues: "If the numbers recorded on the precinct poll pads, ballot marking devices (BMDs), and scanner recap forms do not reconcile with the hand count ballot totals, the poll manager shall immediately determine the reason for the inconsistency; correct the inconsistency, if possible; and fully document the inconsistency or problem along with any corrective measures taken."
Alexander described utilizing this process in the past as a poll worker.
"The end result was all three of us had hand counted and verified, and we had to come up with the same number of ballots," she said, later further describing the rule as "just a double check on totals."
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democratic appointment on the State Election Board, pushed back against the proposed rule. She described how a similar version of the rule got a test run in 2019 and proved unworkable.
"The reason that this was not put into place is because when it was tested in 2019, it failed," she said. "Your experience may not have been that way, but other counties tried and failed. And I don't want to be setting up our counties for failure."
You can review the meeting's live stream from Tuesday below:
The proposed rule on certification, advanced with a 3-1 vote, would call for a "review of precinct returns" before county boards certify their election results. That would include "the total number of ballots cast by each vote method," and provisions for comparing the number of unique voter IDs used at precincts against the total number of votes cast.
"In any precinct in which the number of ballots exceeds the number of unique voters, the Board shall determine the method of voting in which the discrepancy exists," the proposed rule states. "The Board shall investigate the discrepancy, and no votes shall be counted from that precinct until the results of the investigation are presented to the Board."
It would also permit local board members "to examine all election-related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification results."
Lastly, a rule proposal to require the public publishing of election reconciliation reports (the reports documenting that vote totals added up correctly) was advanced 4-0.
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