Pro-Trump Voting Rules Are “Really Bad Idea,” Warn Georgia Officials

Georgia’s slate of pro-Trump election regulations are barreling forward, but their implementation is causing statewide problems that threaten to actually undermine the security of Georgia’s voting process.

With just 26 days until the election, finding people to actually enforce the new regulations remains one of the state’s biggest challenges, NOTUS reported Thursday.

“We actually, just yesterday, had a manager and an assistant manager quit,” Anne Dover, the election director in Cherokee County, told the outlet. “So yeah, it’s kind of challenging.”

Some of the new regulations—which passed with a 3–2 election board vote along MAGA lines and was fueled by a “wishlist” of documents from conservative county election officials—include handing county boards the authority to delay the certification of election results. The rules also mandate investigations into every vote count inconsistency, and, perhaps most troubling for the staffing problem, order all votes to be hand-counted after they’re electronically scanned.

“People don’t want to participate or even work in elections,” Cathy Hagans, the election director of Washington County, told NOTUS, which noted that finding people to hand-count ballots at the end of what will be an excruciatingly long day has become a serious concern for counties across the Peach State.

“Around here, in a little small town, it’s hard to recruit poll workers,” Hagans said.

On Wednesday, local Democrats lost their legal challenge against the swath of new “election integrity” rules, with a judge dismissing their effort to force Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to open an ethics investigation into the committee that crafted the regulations.

The new election certification rules set the stage for bedlam come November, especially considering that at least 70 election officials across 16 counties in key swing states, including Georgia, have been identified as pro-Trump election deniers.

Donald Trump praised the MAGA members of Georgia’s election board days before the August vote, describing Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King as “pit bulls fighting for victory.”

According to the state election board’s website , the body is “entrusted with a variety of responsibilities and authority to protect all Georgians’ right to cast a ballot.”

Georgia has had the largest number of certification refusals since 2020 of anywhere in the country. The five-person board has been accused of other ethics violations , including one instance in which its Trump-friendly majority failed to give proper notice to their Democratic colleagues about a meeting that they used to advance changes to state election rules.