Democrats Sue to Block Georgia Rule Requiring Ballot Hand-Counts on Election Day
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via Getty
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Monday sued the Georgia Election Board to block it from mandating a new rule that requires counties to hand-count ballots cast at polling places in the 2024 presidential election.
The DNC argues – without providing evidence – the proposal will generate chaos and in turn enable “bad-faith actors to claim that fraud has affected election results” asking a state court to declare the rule unlawful and stop it from going into effect.
Backed by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, the lawsuit alleges the hand-counting rule conflicts with state law and the board overstepped its authority when it approved it.
The rule change, approved on a 3-2 vote by allies of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, requires poll workers to hand count ballots to ensure they match the totals counted by machines.
Lawyers for the DNC, the Democratic Party of Georgia and others wrote in the complaint filed in Fulton county superior court:
If the Hand Count Rule is allowed to go into 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.
The complainants further argued delays caused by the hand-counting would “introduce opportunities for bad-faith actors to claim that fraud has affected election results – a result that would undermine public confidence in the results and in the election of Democratic candidates specifically.”
In addition to the Democratic party, the other plaintiffs in the suit are members of the local election boards in Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties – all hubs near the Atlanta area poised to play a major role in determining the winner of the election in Georgia this year.
The rule in question simply requires the poll manager and a team of two other workers in each voting precinct to separate ballots into stacks of 50 and hand-count them, the Guardian reports.
They must all agree on the total count and ensure that it matches the totals from the machine tabulation.
If there is an inconsistency, they are required to determine the reason and if possible correct it.
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