GWINNETT COUNTY, GA — After Georgia’s election board passed new voting rules over the summer, local officials have been rushing to implement the regulations before an election that is just 26 days away. So far, it’s not going great.
“We actually, just yesterday, had a manager and an assistant manager quit,” Anne Dover, the election director in Cherokee County, told NOTUS on Tuesday.
“So yeah, it’s kind of challenging,” she said, with just a touch of sarcasm.
Over the summer, the state’s election board passed new rules as part of Donald Trump’s push for “election integrity.” Among the many changes, a few stand out. One grants authority to county election boards to delay election certification. Another mandates an investigation into even the smallest voting inconsistencies. And, most onerously, another requires votes to be hand counted after they’re scanned.
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For local election officials, the rule changes have presented challenges, with the biggest challenge being a logistical one: people.
In many counties, officials are still trying to find enough staff and volunteers to work on Election Day. And many counties, realizing they don’t have enough people, are racing to find a solution.
“Logistics are not the greatest on trying to work this out,” Danielle Montgomery, the election director for Walker County, told NOTUS. She said, ideally, she’d prefer to hire additional help and not have the same poll workers, who will have already worked about 14 hours on Election Day, count and confirm ballots.
But like many election directors, she may not have a choice. Finding folks willing to come in at the end of the day to hand count, so far, hasn’t been easy.
“People don’t want to participate or even work in elections,” Cathy Hagans, the election director of Washington County, told NOTUS.
“Around here, in a little small town, it’s hard to recruit poll workers,” she said.
The hand-count requirement will delay election results and require a Herculean effort from staff and volunteers. Workers are to count batches of 50 ballots, then check that the hand count matches the count from the scanner. That could translate into long hours, a need for security to keep ballots safe and a host of new costs.
Ironically, the new regulations could mean more hands on ballots and a greater chance the chain of custody gets broken, even though the regulations started as an effort to make elections more secure.
When Georgia’s Speaker of the House appointed a conservative media personality to the state election board in May, he handed Republicans who deny the 2020 results a super majority. To address their fears about election security, the new board issued a set of new rules to take effect for the 2024 election, leaving little time for the officials who actually run the elections to comply.
As if the situation needed any more complications, lawsuits against the rule changes are ongoing, including a new lawsuit from Fulton County on Tuesday.
Multiple counties told NOTUS they haven’t finalized plans regarding the rule changes because the new restrictions might be altered in court.
Trump has praised the election board for its crusade to institute the new rules, even giving them a shoutout during a rally in Atlanta in August. But the new rules may actually be most detrimental in Republican counties.
Trump handily won Cherokee County in 2020, taking 69% of the vote. But the election director there, Dover, said her office has been “scrambling” to find more election workers. It’s Democratic safe havens like Gwinnett County that seem most at ease with the new rules, in part because of the resources at hand.
In Republican Forsyth County, an election official told NOTUS that stress from the rule changes is weighing on election workers as the office tries to hire additional workers. One election worker told them that, if they had to hand count ballots after the ballots had been scanned, they would simply quit.
It could be worse, the election official said. Forsyth could be Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, and the epicenter of madness in 2020. It was in Fulton County where long lines, machine malfunctions and plumbing problems turned the election count into a multiday affair.
That was, of course, only the beginning. Conservative activists and election deniers accused officials of voting irregularities. In some cases, the activists were right, like when they alleged that about 3,000 ballots were double scanned, though the error didn’t change any outcomes. But in many other cases, the critics were wrong, like when they claimed a burst water pipe and suitcases full of illicit ballots helped Joe Biden win Georgia.
Still, the problems led to state investigations and lawsuits between the county and the state election board. As one election worker said, “I wouldn’t, for $1 million, work in Fulton County this election.”
Fulton County’s election coordinator and director could not be reached for comment.
The anxiety is just another serving atop the usual steaming plate of stress for county supervisors. Most were clear that they would conform to the new regulations — some with more conviction than others — but no one has seemed really happy about it.
When poll managers in Bartow County approached election supervisor Joseph Kirk with concerns about hand counting — specifically, the optics of it, and not wanting to be accused of election fraud — he assured them that everything would be fine.
“The sky is not actually falling,” Kirk said. “It’s just a really bad idea.”
Most county election officials have worked in elections for years, if not decades. They’re often longstanding members of their communities, and people recognize their faces at the polling place.
But that earned communal trust is, in some places, being tested by the new rules, which are being implemented so quickly that the public has hardly been able to keep track.
Kirk was recently approached in the street by someone he knew. The person asked if it was true that all the ballots would be shipped to Atlanta to be counted. (That’s false.)
To fill the manpower gap, some election officials are turning to the local political parties. In Lee County, 30 additional workers were needed for Nov. 5. Election supervisor Veronica Johnson reached out to the county parties for help. Her hope is that each could provide 10 people willing to work the extra hours, leaving her to find only another 10 additional workers.
Not every county is feeling pressure from the changes. Several county officials told NOTUS they won’t require more workers, or at least are not concerned about finding more people.
In Gwinnett County, Georgia’s second largest by population, enthusiasm among the electorate has plenty of folks raising their hands to help, and the county has plenty of resources to throw at Election Day.
That feeling of comfort isn’t exclusive to the biggest and richest counties. Gina Banister, the election supervisor for Banks County, said her concern about the new hand-counting rule was minimal. In a smaller county with fewer precincts, she didn’t believe it would have much effect. But, she pointed out, different election directors have different standards for election workers, and some may require more to be satisfied that the election runs smoothly.
Multiple supervisors mentioned that they previously implemented similar protocols for past elections. Some cited the recounts from the 2020 election, saying it prepared them for the new requirements.
But even those at ease about manpower aren’t entirely comfortable with the election itself. Several mentioned concerns about people already acting a bit unhinged.
One election supervisor in a red county, whose office is already being sued over a local race, told NOTUS that, in their county, Republicans bear the blame when it comes to election craziness.
“People feel like they’re entitled these days, and they can’t take losing,” the supervisor, who requested not to be named for security concerns, said. “They act like children, pitching fits because they don’t get their way. So you don’t never know what’s going to happen.”
The director also detailed a call with the secretary of state’s office, where election officials were warned to take extra precautions handling mail as the election draws closer.
Kirk also mentioned concerns about opening mail after incidents where election offices received mail that contained a suspicious substance. Multiple directors mentioned having and being trained to use narcan, a medicine that can reverse drug overdoses, in case they receive mail containing fentanyl.
Back in Cherokee County, Dover’s staff knows the drill. If someone is working late — and, lately, everyone is — they’re not to be in the office alone. And when it’s time to go, she prefers the staff leave together.
“I feel like we’re very safe once we’re in the building,” Dover said. It’s when they leave that she gets nervous.
Security concerns seem to be at the top of everyone’s mind — and it’s only October. It’ll get worse as the election gets closer.
Some local sheriffs have promised additional security, like stationing a deputy outside of polling places or increasing patrols around precincts. Some have even offered to escort election workers who are delivering vote totals.
“The state election stuff is not worrying me,” the election supervisor in a red county said. “It’s the people.”
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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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