'Distrust and chaos': Georgia Dems, GOP battle over new ballot rule as early voting kicks off Tuesday
One of the biggest political fights in Georgia this election season will be over a new rule that all ballots must be hand counted after being tabulated by a machine.
Early voting will kick off in Georgia on Tuesday, but the two major political parties are still battling over how those ballots will be tabulated after Election Day.
Democrats are in the midst of suing Georgia’s State Election Board over a recently passed rule that would require all votes be counted by hand in each county after they are machine-tabulated to ensure the totals match.
Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Ga., chairwoman of the Georgia Democratic Party, told Fox News Digital earlier this month that the new rule’s intent was "to sew division and distrust and chaos in our election process."
However, Republican Party officials in the Peach State have accused Democrats of misrepresenting the rule, which they have held up as a critical guardrail to ensuring voter confidence in the elections.
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"It’s a check on the system. It's like reconciling your checkbook," Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon told Fox News Digital. "I don't want a repeat of 2020. I don't think anybody does. And so this is an important way we can restore confidence out there in the public that their elections are secure and fair."
The new rule, which passed on a 3-2 vote by the elections board, has faced some opposition from the right. The office of Georgia’s Secretary of State, led by Republican Brad Raffensperger, called the rule "misguided" in a press release in August.
Requiring the hand counting of ballots after machine tabulation, the release said, made it "likely that Georgians will not know the results on Election Night" and "introduces a new and significant risk to chain of custody procedures."
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, also a Republican, warned election board members in a memo that the rule was not grounded in any existing law and is highly vulnerable to a legal challenge, PBS reported.
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However, party officials aligned with former President Donald Trump support the rule. Cobb County GOP Chair Salleigh Grubbs called suggestions it would cause delays in the election process "misinformation."
"That is just absolutely not true. There are some counties that already count the number of ballots, and that's all we're saying," Grubbs told Fox News Digital. "Let's just make sure that we know the total number of ballots that were cast and that that reconciles with the total number of ballots scanned."
Williams would not say how she believed the hand-count ballot rule would affect the election but argued its "intent" is to undermine voter confidence in Georgia’s elections.
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She pointed out that Georgia was the center of Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 loss.
"We counted the ballots in Georgia not once, not twice, but three times, and every time Donald Trump lost. And that's what this is about. These three pro-Trump members of the State Election Board are trying to create distrust and confusion in our election process so that if and when Donald Trump loses the election once again in battleground Georgia, they can say, ‘See, this is why,’" Williams said.
"There was nothing done in the 2020 election that was unfair. The votes were counted, and Donald Trump lost."
However, McKoon suggested that he would have his own doubts about the election if the Democrats’ lawsuit was successful.
"I think it will undermine voter confidence because voters will rightly ask the question, ‘Why were they against checking to make sure that the machine count was accurate?’" the Georgia GOP chair said.
"Why wouldn’t we want to take these basic steps to make sure voters have confidence in our system?"
Georgia’s early voting period runs from Oct. 15 through Nov. 1.
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