ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia lawmakers are retreating from election proposals that could have allowed a Donald Trump-aligned state board to strike thousands of challenged voters from the rolls and would have required polling officials to count the number of ballots by hand.
House Bill 397 was rewritten to remove those provisions before it was passed Thursday by the Senate Ethics Committee, sending it to the full Senate for more debate.
The bill still seeks to force the state to leave the Electronic Records Information Center. Some question the funding and motives of that multistate group, which tries to maintain accurate voter rolls. But Georgia now would not be required to exit until mid-2027 instead of within months, as was earlier proposed.
Republican Rep. Tim Fleming of Covington said he and others decided to remove some of the most controversial provisions after they were panned by officials who work for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, county election directors and others in hours of testimony Wednesday night.
“After hearing a lot of concerns, we realize there’s some things in the bill that probably needed some more work, some more time to be focused on, which we are going to work on during the off-session on our side,” Fleming said.
Supporters said poll workers need to make sure the number of ballots collected on Election Day matches the total counted by ballot-scanning machines. But county officials warned that a requirement to count by hand the number of ballots — although not individual votes — could lead to delays in reporting results, mistakes by tired workers and problems with ballot security. Some counties in Georgia conducted hand counts until a few years ago.
Similarly, supporters said the State Election Board needs to hear appeals of challenged voters because counties are turning down thousands of challenges. But opponents questioned whether the Republican-controlled board can adequately or fairly hear appeals. GOP activists challenged more than 63,000 voters statewide last summer, but most were rejected by counties.
The State Election Board adopted a series of rules amid intense scrutiny last year only to see a judge throw most of them out, finding that the board overreached its legal authority. An appeal of that ruling was argued last week before the Georgia Supreme Court.
The bill still seeks to put some rejected rules into law. That includes allowing increased access in election offices for partisan-appointed poll watchers and requiring counties to publish more statistics about absentee ballots.
The measure also includes other Republican goals, like a ban on counties opening election offices the weekend before an election to let voters hand-deliver ballots. State and federal judges slapped down Republican lawsuits to block the practice last November.
Other items cater to Republicans' continuing distrust of the election system, like requiring live nighttime video surveillance of ballot drop boxes that are emptied and then padlocked shut inside government buildings closed to the public.
Jeff Amy, The Associated Press
