ATLANTA — Georgia’s State Election Board is preparing to vote on nearly a dozen rule changes Friday that could take effect before the upcoming election, concerning local officials who are training poll workers and processing absentee ballot applications.
The once-obscure state panel is already facing scrutiny for advancing a pair of rule changes in August that could disrupt the certification of election results. The moves by the board’s Republican majority have drawn praise from former President Donald Trump and pushback from Georgia’s GOP secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and other election officials.
“You can have 10 election directors stand up there and say, ‘This is bad, this is bad, this is bad.’ And then the board says, ‘I make a motion that we approve this rule,’” says Travis Doss, the elections director in Richmond County.
Among the changes up for a vote on Friday is a new requirement that a polling place’s manager and two witnesses hand-count the paper ballots in every ballot box to verify that the count matches the number of ballots recorded by voting machines.