The Georgia State Election Board approved a brand new on rule on Friday, which would require all paper ballots to be counted by hand for the election in November.
The rule would require three ballot officers to independently depend every field of ballots. Any discrepancies discovered between the hand depend and recorded totals are required to be documented and resolved by the ballot supervisor. The aim of the brand new rule is to “make sure the safe, clear, and correct counting of ballots by requiring a scientific course of the place ballots are independently hand-counted by three sworn ballot officers”.
Till this rule was authorized, lower than .2% of registered voters within the US had been topic handy counting of ballots, most dwelling in single-precinct municipalities. Hand counting ballots may be time consuming and costly, based on Verified Voting. In 2021, Mesa County, Colorado hand counted ballots for the overall election, paying roughly $80,000 for one week of labor.
Georgia is currently the one state within the U.S. to implement a hand counting rule.
The Marketing campaign Authorized Heart criticized the brand new rule, stating that hand counting is unnecessarily time consuming and creates room for human error.
In 2022, Marketing campaign Authorized Heart acknowledged that:
Changing voting machines with hand counts as the primary means of counting votes would weaken the electoral system by introducing a higher diploma of human error into the method. This could enhance the time wanted to course of ballots, depend votes and report correct election outcomes, growing alternatives for politicians who need to sow mistrust in our elections and rig the principles of the sport to work of their favor.
The Georgia State Election Board, which consists of 5 members, is tasked with a wide range of obligations surrounding the “safety of the dear proper to solid a poll”. These duties embody promulgating guidelines and laws to advertise uniformity and legality in election practices and taking such different actions deemed crucial to make sure “truthful, authorized and orderly elections”.
Source / Picture: jurist.org
