The people who run elections in Georgia are angry and frustrated over new state rules that they say will make the process less secure and their jobs more difficult.
At a meeting this week in the small city of Forsyth, Ga., county election officials from across the state expressed exasperation at the Republican-controlled State Election Board, which in recent weeks upended the process for certifying elections. The changes have injected new uncertainty into the democratic process, they said, just before the November election.
“I’m very concerned about some of the rules they have passed,” said Anne Dover, the director of elections for Cherokee County, a suburban county north of Atlanta. Some of them appear to contradict state law, she said, putting local officials in a no-win situation. “If you write a rule that goes against the law, then are you going to turn me into the attorney general when I break your rule?” she asked. “I’m of the mind-set that I will break a rule before I will break a law.”
Running elections has become increasingly difficult in many parts of the country since 2020. State and local officials have had to contend with aggressive political activists, foreign interference and threats to their personal safety.
In Georgia, where the State Election Board has become increasingly aligned with the policy goals of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, scrutiny over the process of conducting elections and tabulating the vote has been especially intense.
Last week, Democrats sued the board, warning that its new election certification rules could create chaos. Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, has criticized the board for making new rules so close to the upcoming election. “The Georgia state election board is a mess,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, which represents more than 500 local officials, sent a letter to the State Election Board urging members to halt any further rule-making. The organization said the new rules “risk undermining the public’s trust in the electoral process and place undue pressure” on election officials.
At issue are measures that give local officials authority to conduct “reasonable inquiry” into elections and that require them to be given “all election-related documentation” before certification. Critics argue that the rules create the false impression that local election officials have discretionary power over certifying election results. (Normally the courts — not local election boards — have been the venue for challenging elections and prosecuting fraud.) And they are concerned about the prospect of more new rules from the board in mid-September.
Officials from the State Election Board who voted for the new rules did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For some local election officials, the new rules have already created headaches.
Larger counties had already conducted trainings for their poll workers and will now have to call back everyone to redo parts of the training. The possibility of even more changes could scramble things yet again.
“Some of the rules won’t go into effect until after we have poll worker training,” said Jenni Phipps, the election director of Walton County, east of Atlanta. “So we’ve already trained our poll workers one way, and then things change.”
Rock Carter, the assistant elections supervisor in Camden County, in the southeastern corner of the state, expressed worry over how local officials would contend with people trying to disrupt certification of elections. “Those are the concerns,” he said, “and it’s the concerns of not only the election workers and election officials, but also the public that comes to observe the certification.”
Some election officials complained that members of the state board who approved the new rules had little experience working on elections. The board’s three-member conservative majority includes a former elected official, a podcast host and a doctor.
“Some of the board members may not have worked in elections, especially as poll workers,” said Tom Gillon, the election supervisor for Macon-Bibb County in central Georgia. “We’ll implement every law and every rule that we were given. But I hope they will listen to the different county board elections about what our concerns are.”
The idea that Election Day might not go smoothly in Georgia is not an idle concern. Just this week, election officials across the state received manila envelopes stuffed with thick packets, threatening “treason” and insisting that the 2024 election “cannot be certified” because local officials are not in compliance with election laws.
Ronda Walthour, the elections supervisor of Liberty County, south of Savannah, marveled that whoever was behind the mailing had so much time on their hands. “I just don’t understand it,” she said. “But at this point in time, we just take it day by day.”
Some threats to election officials have been more personal. As Mr. Raffensperger noted in a speech to the officials on Tuesday, local election offices in Georgia now require a new tool, next to the tabulators and e-poll books: a can of Narcan, a medication used to reverse drug overdose. The cans were installed after letters arrived at the Fulton County election office last November filled with fentanyl.
“Our world has completely changed, and we have to be very cognizant of that,” said Deidre Holden, the supervisor of elections in Paulding County, in the northwestern part of the state. “We have to know what’s going on around us, not just for our safety, but for the safety of our voters and our staff. So it’s definitely changed. It’s very eye-opening.”
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