The Georgia Election Board will decide on sweeping rule changes Friday — less than a month before early voting begins — including proposals to hand-count ballots and require absentee ballot tracking that could cost $4 per voter.
All 11 proposals come from right-wing activists, voters or local election board members, and they’re up for approval by a State Election Board, whose three-member Republican majority was singled out for praise by former President Donald Trump at an Atlanta rally last month.
Election directors across Georgia oppose most of the ideas, saying they’re poorly thought-out, expensive and disruptive as they prepare for a presidential election expected to draw 5 million voters. They’re calling for a pause on alterations to established procedures, especially after many poll workers have already been trained.
The eleventh-hour initiatives are the latest efforts by the State Election Board to adjust the voting landscape in Georgia, a battleground state where the 2020 presidential race was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes and Trump made the false claim that the election was stolen .