Why Georgia Could Be at the Center of an Election Storm Again

This was no ordinary meeting of Georgia’s once-austere electoral committee.

The state panel convened Monday for its second daylong meeting to discuss new election rules, hurling accusations at each other as its nonpartisan chairman banged his gavel, calling for order.

The five members had met to discuss last week’s 3-2 vote to approve a rule requiring counties to hand-count ballots on election night and after.

In recent months, the panel’s new Republican members have approved changes that have prompted warnings that the swing state could once again find itself at the center of confusion on Election Day and beyond.

After narrowly losing Georgia in 2020, Donald Trump and his allies filed lawsuits and spread baseless claims of voter fraud, with Trump at one point pressuring Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” — the margin by which he lost in the Peach State.

Trump is currently fighting state criminal charges for conspiring to overturn that Georgia defeat.

Since then, the drama has continued to play out at the state election board, with Democratic member Sarah Tindall Ghazal accusing her Republican colleagues of being motivated by “far-right beliefs.”

On Monday, Republican Rep. Janice Johnston hit back at the criticism, saying her character was being “assassinated.”

Last Friday’s vote on hand counting of ballots in Georgia came after weeks of objections from local election officials.

Polling station supervisors in Georgia told the BBC that the new rule could cause problems on election day and after, including delays in reporting results and human error.

The new measure requires poll workers to manually count ballots on election night — or in some cases, the next day — to confirm that the number of paper ballots matches the amount counted by the machine.

Janelle King, a Republican who voted in favor of the rule, told the BBC that the measure is aimed at ensuring the accuracy of election results.

She stressed that the rule does not require election officials to count the actual results on ballots, only the number of ballots.

“I think our voters value accuracy over speed,” she said. “That’s the best practice.”

Other election officials disagree.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Anne Dover, Republican elections director in Cherokee County, Georgia, told the BBC.

Dover says the new election rules are being pushed by those who fear the 2020 election was fraudulent. She says her own husband has questioned election results from four years ago in other parts of the state.

“They just don’t appreciate the efforts that election officials make to do a good job,” she said.

Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in Irwin County, Georgia, says the new rule will slow down the release of results and “leave room for chaos, and chaos can breed doubt.”

Compton fears the aftermath of the 2024 Georgia election could resemble events four years ago, when Trump and his allies cited hours of mail-in ballot counting as evidence of voter fraud, undermining public confidence in the electoral process.

This isn’t the first time that changes to voting rules have sparked an uproar in an election year. Democrats launched lawsuits four years ago after they expanded the use of ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin and expanded mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.

But the difference in Georgia is that the criticism comes from both sides of the political spectrum.

The Georgia State Board of Elections includes three Republicans, one Democrat and a chairman appointed by the Republican governor.

Historically, this role was procedural and nonpartisan, but in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the panels have become a political lightning rod.

“Today, that work has morphed into something akin to partisan football,” said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal nonprofit.

The state board was previously chaired by Georgia’s secretary of state, but Raffensperger’s Republican colleagues pushed him out after the 2020 election, a move critics called revenge for his defense of the election results.

Since then, several Republicans close to Trump have joined the board and gained a majority of its members: Ms. King, Ms. Johnston and former Republican Senator Rick Jeffares.

During the meetings, the board’s three new Republican members advocated for a number of changes to state elections, including a rule passed earlier this year that allows local election boards to conduct “reasonable investigations” into election results before certifying them.

Ms. King argues that the rule will lead to “an increase in certifications” because board members will be able to review the documents themselves.

“We want to make sure they have as much confidence in this election as possible,” she said.

Trump personally thanked Ms. King and the two new Republican members of his board by name, telling a rally in Atlanta in August that the trio were “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

Officials and election administration experts said that while the state board’s rule changes could lead to disruptions in November, they believed Georgia’s broader election laws would ultimately pave the way for a secure presidential election.

Some also said they remained concerned about the damage it could do to public confidence in the electoral system.

Dover said misinformation that circulated during the last election resulted in bomb threats and voicemails harassing election officials.

Peter Simmons, a Georgia political strategist with the self-described nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, noted that while Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in 2020 have never been substantiated, a large portion of Americans still believe his claims.

“That’s basically what inspired this series of actions (in Georgia) today,” Simmons said.