The right wing of the Georgia State Election Board that champions rules favored by GOP supporters of President-elect Donald is set to get back to its agenda after court decisions thwarted past attempts to implement the changes before November.
The fight for voting rights in Georgia intensified after the 2020 presidential election, when Trump and his supporters falsely claimed that widespread voting fraud had cost him his reelection bid.
The debate over the sweeping changes to Georgia’s election rules continued last week with the conclusion of Tuesday’s presidential election, which saw Trump defeat Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.
The 5.3 million vote turnout for this year’s general election, including 4 million votes cast in person at polls early and absentee ballots, was cited as evidence by Republican lawmakers behind 2021 election overhaul and subsequent election rules changes leading up to the Nov. 5 election.
Republicans in Georgia disputed the claims of voter suppression after Democratic nominee Joe Biden defeated President Trump in the 2020 election. A battle over election rules continues to play out this year before the Georgia State Election Board, which meets next on Nov. 18.
Georgia has until Nov. 23 to certify the election results.
Trump easily surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president, thanks in part to Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. In the Nov. 5 election, Trump defeated Harris by 2.7 million votes to 2.5 million, a sharp contrast to the 2020 election, when Trump famously lost by just under 12,000 votes to Joe Biden in Georgia.
The battle over key election rules is still set to play out before the Georgia Supreme Court, which will hold hearings on the Republican National Committee’s appeal of a Fulton County judge invalidating new statewide procedures. Attorneys for the state and the Republican groups argued for the pressing need to have rules in place in time for the general election for daily reporting on absentee ballots, new ID requirements for dropping off absentee ballots, hand counting paper ballots and broader discretion for local election boards to investigate the way a county conducts an election before certification.
Attorney Marc Elias, who challenged conservative election rules on behalf of progressive and Democratic groups, pledged to continue to do so following the Nov. 5 presidential election. Elias’s Democracy Docket team was hired this year to assist the Harris campaign with multiple aspects of the election program, including voter protection, recounts, and other litigation challenging state voting laws.
Ellis wrote in an online blog that despite the “chilling realization” of Trump’s impending victory, Harris’s speech resonated reinforced their advocacy to protect democracy that began with Hillary Clinton’s concession speech to Trump in the 2016 presidential election
“Hillary’s concession speech helped guide me to a worldview that has served me well ever since, Elias wrote Nov. 7 on Democracy Docket. “I will always be an admirer of her tenacity and grit. But in her speech, Kamala spoke to what I value and who I am. We all owe Kamala a lot for her fight and perseverance. But I owe her much more. We will fight. And when we fight we win.”
The three GOP board members who have been publicly praised by Trump are expected to continue pushing for new rules such as requiring three poll workers at every precinct after polls close on election nights to individually count paper ballots to confirm whether the hand tally matches the number of machine-counted ballots.
The State Election Board has also called for a highly controversial change giving the county election board’s new discretion over certifying election results. The three Republican state election officials are asking the court to clarify state law in order to give local election board officials the ability to examine election records and the right to cite any vote discrepancies or other election irregularities as a reason to refuse to certify the election results.
The State Election Board has been forced to defend against a flurry of lawsuits since former GOP state Sen. Rick Jeffares and political media personality Janelle King were appointed earlier this year to the five-member board. The controversial rules were often approved by a 3-2 majority, with Fulton County Republican Janice Johnston joining Sandy Springs’ King and Henry County’s Jeffares in advancing the proposed changes until the rules were finalized several weeks later.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.