'Too much, too late': Georgia judge temporarily halts controversial ballot hand-counting rule
Georgia vote counting
A Georgia judge on Tuesday (Oct 15) hit pause on a controversial rule that required ballots to be hand-counted in the 2024 election. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, as per reports, said that the rule was "too much, too late" to be enforced effectively.
What is Georgia's hand-counting ballot rule?
With the US presidential vote only weeks away, the Georgia State Election Board, led by a pro-Trump majority, passed a controversial rule in late Septemberrequiringthe manual hand count of ballots.
It calls for three individuals at each precinct to manually tally ballots and compare their results with machine counts.In addition, a poll manager must then confirm that the figures correspond to the tallies generated by the machines and take corrective actions if there are any inconsistencies.
The rule whichhad caused alarm in the closely watched swing statewas passed by thestate election boardby a three-to-two vote. According to AFP, those in favour of the controversial rule are staunch Trump backers, and were even praised by the ex-president as "pit bulls" fighting for "victory."
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Judge McBurney questioned why such a significant change was being introduced so close to the election,.
"You dumped a problem in their lap … a few weeks before it needs to be put into operation," he said to state election board lawyer Robert Thomas.
"What's the wisdom of that, and what's the necessity for that, as opposed to, 'Alright, let's make sure that we get to try this out, and this will be effective the next election?',"asked the judge.
Critics call rule 'misguided'
Both Democratic and Republican officials in Georgia, as per reports, have labelled the rule unnecessary given that machines already count the vote, without any margin for "human error". They also contend that hand-countingcould slow down the process and be a potential tool to sow doubt and provide an opportunity for disinformation if errors occur during human counting.
Even as Trump praised those pushing the rule,Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that therule change was "misguided.". He noted that "activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures" only "undermine voter confidence and burden election workers."
(More to follow)
