'Chaos that it is sowing': Georgia judge appears skeptical of ballot hand-count rule

A Georgia judge appeared skeptical of a controversial new rule from the Georgia State Election Board at a court hearing Tuesday. The rule would require thousands of state voting precincts to hand count ballots in the November election.

The speedily-scheduled hearing was held in a lawsuit brought by the election board for Cobb County, near Atlanta, which is one of several litigantssuing to block the rule from taking effect in the final weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

The new rule, which was passed Sept. 20, would require three separate individuals in each precinct to count the number of ballots by hand and confirm each of their counts matches those of the others. A poll manager must also confirm those figures match tallies produced by machines, and work to correct any inconsistency.

The rule is one of several late election changes from three Republican members of the five-person state election board. The trio was praised by former President Donald Trump at an August rally as "pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory."

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, has criticized the hand-count rule and other recent changes as introducing "the opportunity for error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud."

Studies have found hand-counting ballots to be slower and less accurate than machine-counting.

"Why wouldn't we just pause, especially on the hand-count rule, given what looks like a fairly robust record of chaos that it is sowing?" Judge Robert C. I. McBurney asked Robert Thomas, a lawyer for the state board.