State Election Board Member Discusses Controversial Rule Revisions

Georgia State Election Board member Janelle King sought to clarify on Thursday new rules for the Nov. 5 election the board has rolled out in recent months.

King was the featured speaker at the Floyd County Republican Women’s monthly meeting.

“My biggest frustration has been the misleading of the people,” she said. “We are fighting propaganda artists that are out here. Their whole job is to make sure chaos reigns among the people.”

King explained her reasoning for approving what she called two controversial rules: the reasonable inquiry rule and a hand-count rule.

“I supported both of those rules because I saw, one, there was a need for it,” she said. “Two, it had a minimal impact compared to some of the other rules that went before us, and three, I saw how it could secure and tighten up our elections from the bottom-up approach.”

What King referred to as the reasonable inquiry rule allows local election board members to request additional information before certifying an election.

To certify an election, board members have to sign an affidavit stating they’re entirely certain that the results are accurate. But King said they’re not allowed to look at the data, and if they are wrong, they are held accountable.

“If my attorney ever put something in front of me and said don’t verify it, just sign it, he’d be fired,” King said. “For me, the rule was common sense.”

In Floyd County, election board members participate in the elections and tabulations.

Concerns have been raised that the reasonable inquiry rule will give board members an excuse not to certify elections if they don’t like the result. King said the message through “the media” is there would be a mass decertification across counties.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous and a complete lie,” she said. “Last I checked, this board is made up of both Republicans and Democrats, so the possibility of that is just not likely.”

When discussing what new information board members could view, the rule isn’t very clear, and King wasn’t clear Thursday when asked what might be requested.

It would allow them to request what I believe would be recount sheets, documents you obtain from the election, she said.

The second controversial rule King said she approved was hand-counting the ballots on election day. The hand-counting rule was proposed in two parts, King explained: early and absentee voting, and day of the election.

She said she only supported doing it on election day, explaining that it would ensure every ballot was accounted for.

With hand-counting early voting ballots, King said she was concerned that unethical people would use them to affect the election outcome.

For example, she said, an unethical precinct worker might look at the votes when counting the ballots at a particular precinct and use the information to convince voters of a particular party to vote at that precinct.

“I did not support hand counting the ballots you’re pulling out of the scanner during early voting because I don’t know if I believe everyone has integrity,” she said.

Those against the revised rules have said that hand-counting will slow down proceedings and introduce more human error.

“It won’t take that much longer,” King argued. “We aren’t tabulating, we’re counting the paper.”

Several lawsuits have been filed in response to the rule changes. King told the Floyd GOP Women that she had to leave early for a litigation meeting to discuss four or five open suits.

Before leaving the meeting, King advised everyone to vote early or fill out an absentee ballot to ensure your vote gets in.