With more than one month until Election Day, the battle for Georgia’s electoral votes is well underway. On Sept. 20, the Georgia State Election Board enacted a rule requiring that all ballots be hand-counted this November. Republican lawmakers pushed for the new rule despite opposition from the Republican secretary of state and attorney general who feel that the new rule could cause confusion on election night.
Considering former President Donald Trump’s attempted subversion of the 2020 election in Georgia, the implementation of these new regulations signals that we must be prepared to combat another threat to democracy in our state this year.
Additionally, recent Georgia State Elections Board (SEB) rules give local county officials more power to challenge election results as fraudulent. One allows individual members of county governments to demand an examination of all election-related documentation before the certification of results, and the other introduces new pre-election certification requirements that are not outlined in Georgia law. For example, the rule requires that all disputed votes — in which electoral officials question the legality of the voter casting the ballot — be computed and certified justly according to rules enumerated by a local board of representatives. The bureaucratic hurdles that these policies would create are not only inefficient but also would place power over the democratic process, and thus the ability to corrupt it, into the hands of a small minority of local officials — something that goes against the very notion of democratic elections.
The brief argues that this authority in the hands of elected officials amounts to “inviting extralegal discretion into the process.” It goes on to claim that, taken together, these rules “threaten to disenfranchise Georgia voters by transforming the certification of county election results from a ministerial accounting function into a discretionary political act.”
Voters should not be surprised if — and when — the new SEB rules are used to attempt to subvert the democratic process this November.
Moreover, the shift in SEB protocol is just the latest manifestation of challenges to electoral integrity in Georgia. In May, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also signed legislation tightening voting restrictions, which, among other things, lists a change of primary residence or a nonresidential address as probable cause for completely disqualifying voters from the rolls. While this may seem innocuous, this change has far-reaching implications for housing-insecure populations and any Georgia residents with homes in other states, including college students.
In 2020, Georgia’s presidential election outcome was decided by a margin of 12,670 votes — a count smaller than the student population of Emory University. Although it’s easy to feel discouraged by the tide of antidemocratic forces targeting voters in our state, we cannot allow apathy to distract us from the fact that our votes still can and will matter.
As such, at a time when state officials are keen to look for politicized reasons to disqualify voters, it is imperative that students preemptively confirm their registration to avoid any complications on Election Day. Thankfully, you can confirm your registration status through the Georgia My Voter Page and register to vote if you have not already done so with ease. Campus organizations like Emory Votes Initiative (EVI), which tables weekly during Wonderful Wednesday, exist for that very purpose. At the EVI booth, students can take five minutes to fill out a form with their personal information, scan their identification and email their registration form to the Dekalb County voter registration office before the Oct. 7 deadline.
In November, it very possibly could be 12,670 or so Emory student votes that counter election disturbance at the hands of Trump or corrupt public officials.
No Georgia voter can forget that after the last election, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to dispute the state’s electoral count, which had swung in favor of President Joe Biden.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes,” he said, pleading with Raffensperger to interfere with the vote-counting process. “The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right?” Trump said during the call.
Raffensperger, luckily, did not comply with Trump’s call to artificially “find” votes, and Biden won Georgia precisely because voters did not allow themselves to be intimidated by the attempted suppression of democracy. As Trump has since maintained the fallacious claim that he won in Georgia, we can expect him to try everything in his power to twist the election process in his favor this year.
Don’t be surprised when the integrity of Georgia’s electoral process is threatened, and again Trump supporters call to “stop the count.” Instead, make sure you are properly equipped to fight for it.
The above editorial represents the majority opinion of The Emory Wheel’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is composed of Marc Goedemans, Carson Kindred, Justin Leach, Eliana Liporace and Ilka Tona.
