On Aug. 19, the Republican-controlled Georgia State Election Board approved new voting rules that permit county election board members to investigate all discrepancies in the voting procedure and delay certification of election results. Shortly after the rules were passed, The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued Georgia state election officials, alleging that the new rules violated fair voting procedures.
Democrats say that these new rules could allow elected officials to intentionally delay the approval of votes and, in turn, delay the election results. Similarly, voting rights groups say that elected officials could deny to verify any votes that don’t include their preferred candidate.
“The real concern here is that election deniers and the MAGA contingency are doing everything they can to undermine confidence in our election and lay the groundwork to invalidate any election results they don’t like,” Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett said.
The new rules were approved by three conservative officials of the election board out of five total members. Former President Donald Trump, who has been vocal in his criticism of the 2020 election results, expressed support for the three members during a Georgia campaign rally in early August.
Salleigh Grubbs, a Cobb County Republican official, explained to CBS, “There is a lot of human error that can happen . . . I do not think it [the 2020 election in Georgia] was a free and fair election.”
States including Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and New Mexico have also attempted to postpone election results or the certification process before during the 2020 general election and the 2022 midterm elections. Due to the attempts’ violations of the corresponding state legislation, each one was dismissed in court.
There are four common practices among all states regarding the voting process. First is verification, where election officials will take steps prescribed by law to ensure that each vote is cast by an eligible voter. Next is counting, where the ballots are physically counted at polling locations. Third is canvassing, where election officials can verify the accuracy of the count from the polling location. The last step includes certification, a ministerial process where the election results are officially declared and winners are confirmed.
The lawsuit argues that the new rules passed will add an extra layer to the voting certification process by allowing the county election boards to pursue a “reasonable inquiry” into voting results before they can be certified, thus delaying the declaration of the result.
The lawsuit also questions the election board members’ power to assess election-related documentation before the certification process starts.
The lawsuit states, “According to their drafters, these rules rest on the assumption that certification of election results by a county board is discretionary and subject to free-ranging inquiry that may delay certification or foreclose it entirely. But that is not the law in Georgia.”
Several elected officials in Georgia held a press conference at the Georgia Capitol calling for Gov. Kemp to hold the state election board accountable and to stop changing the election rules before the November election.
During the conference, Wayne Kendall, a Georgia attorney, explained that the election board violated the Open Meetings Act, which states that government agencies, boards and commissions must conduct their meetings in the open. Kendall also accused the three conservative election board members of not sending out notices of the election rule changes to all constituents.
Kendall said, “The state ethics law requires that all members of boards, commissions and authorities should uphold the laws of the state of Georgia…when members of the state election board take it upon themselves to totally ignore the state law department which advised them that the meeting that they held on July 12 was an illegal meeting,…these particular individuals have shown a desire to violate the law [and] they should be called upon to resign their positions.”
Georgia’s disagreements in voting procedure stem from a nationwide trend towards questioning election integrity. Whether Georgia officials can come to a consensus on this issue before November remains to be seen.