ATLANTA (AP) — The presidential and general elections in the United States are scheduled for Tuesday, November 5th, but it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the results of the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be ready that night or even the next day, among other things because this Friday the Georgia Board of Elections approved a new rule requiring the hand counting of the number of paper ballots after the voting is completed.
The board approved the regulation against the advice of the state prosecutor's office, the state Department of State, and a county election officials association.
Three members of the electoral board who were praised by former President Donald Trump during a rally last month in Atlanta voted in favor of the measure, while the only Democrat on the board and the president, who is nonpartisan, voted against.
In a memorandum sent to the members of the electoral board on Thursday, the office of the state attorney general, Chris Carr, said that no provision in state law allows for counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level before the ballots are taken to the county election superintendent for counting.
Last month, the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, said that the idea of a manual count was "wrong", stating that it would "delay the reporting of election results and introduce risks to chain of custody procedures."
If Georgia becomes the decisive state for the next presidential election, it could delay the final result by several days with this new measure.
What is the new electoral rule in the state of Georgia about?
The new rule requires that the number of paper ballots —not the number of votes— be counted at each polling place by three different election workers until all three counts are equal. If a scanner has more than 750 ballots inside at the end of voting, the polling place supervisor can decide to start the count the next day.
Voters in Georgia vote on a touchscreen machine that then prints a paper ballot that includes a list of the voter's choices and a QR code that is scanned to count the votes.
The proponents of the new rule said that it is necessary to ensure that the number of scanned ballots matches the number of registered voters in the computers, the number of ballots recorded by the voting machines, and the scanners.
The memory cards that record the votes at the polling stations are used to count the votes on the night of the elections.
What is the importance of Georgia in the upcoming presidential elections?
In 2020, for the first time since 1992, a Democratic candidate -Joe Biden- won in Georgia, further expanding the victory over Donald Trump.
As the vote was very close (49.4% to 49.2%), there was an automatic recount of votes and subsequently a second recount at the request of the Trump campaign. Both confirmed Biden's victory.
Trump and his allies pushed several theories of electoral fraud, and even illegally pressured Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, who defended the election results. In a phone call, Trump asked the Secretary to "find" the over 11,000 votes he needed to overturn the outcome.
Such interference by Trump and his allies is currently under criminal investigation, and there is a criminal charge against the current Republican candidate.
Anyway, even if Trump had kept the 16 electoral votes from Georgia, that wouldn't have affected Biden's victory.
For the current process, Georgia appears as one of the key states for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. Winning this state is important for both contenders, but it seems more crucial for the Republican magnate. In the case of the Democratic candidate, she could still reach the White House even if she loses in Georgia.