A 3-2 Republican majority on Georgia’s State Election Board voted Friday to require local election offices to hand count the state’s millions of ballots, inviting chaos as experts warned the task would prove impossible in the state’s largest counties, which lean Democratic.
The rule was just the latest in a string of partisan votes from the board, members of which Donald Trump praised by name at a rally in Georgia last month. A few weeks ago, the board empowered county election officials — many of whom have challenged election results in the past — to personally investigate election results and demand reams of election-related documentation, potentially delaying the certification of the state’s results.
The board was made more partisan as part of a Trumpian election overhaul bill passed in 2021 after Trump lost the state in the 2020 presidential election.
Friday’s rule requires a hand count of all ballots by individual poll managers and two “sworn poll officers.”…