Members of the Georgia state election board will meet Friday at the state Capitol in Atlanta to discuss proposed changes to voting rules.

Mike Stewart/AP

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Mike Stewart/AP

ATLANTA — The Georgia State Election Board on Friday approved a controversial rule that would require ballots cast on Election Day to be counted by hand.

Republicans approved the measure despite opposition from Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general and dozens of local election officials, who said the last-minute change could cause delays and confusion on Election Night and in the days afterward.

“If this board votes to implement this rule, I think we are putting ourselves in legal jeopardy,” said John Fervier, the board’s independent chairman, who voted against the proposal.

The council’s actions in recent weeks have drawn additional attention to election administration in Georgia, where former President Donald Trump and others made baseless allegations of fraud following the 2020 election. The state is expected to again be a crucial swing state in the 2024 elections.

The rule approved Friday requires the polling station manager and two poll workers in each polling precinct to each count the number of paper ballots in each ballot box and compare it to the total number of votes generated by the ballot scanner.

A number of local election officials testified against the manual counts, citing concerns that human error could easily lead to discrepancies. While the rule applies to the counting of ballots, not individual elections as some conservatives have called for across the country in recent years, election experts agree that manual counts are much slower and less reliable than machine counts.

Election officials also warned that changing the rules so late in the voting season could cause confusion, as many counties are currently conducting training for poll workers.

“Since 2020, we’ve implemented over 200 pages of election code and rules,” said Ethan Compton, Irwin County’s supervisor of elections. “We’ve practiced, we’ve trained, we’re prepared, we’re ready. Don’t change this at the last minute.”

“We’re verifying a set of numbers using some other means,” said Sharlene Alexander, a Republican member of the Fayette County Elections Board who co-sponsored the rule. “That’s all we’re doing.”

The change was supported by the state Assembly’s three Republican members, who have already faced criticism for pushing through changes to the way local boards of elections certify election results. Those rules are being challenged in the courts, with a trial scheduled for Oct. 1.

The Georgia Attorney General’s Office recommended against relaxing the manual counting rules.

“These proposed rules are not bound by law and are therefore likely to be precisely the type of unauthorized legislation that agencies cannot enact,” Elizabeth Young, senior assistant attorney general, wrote in the letter to the administration.

The board postponed a vote on another rule that would require a similar manual count of early voting ballots. Janelle King, one of the Republican members, asked that proposal, along with several others, be revisited after the 2024 election.

The board voted on a total of 11 rule changes Friday. Six of them passed, including allowing poll watchers to access more locations during vote counting, publishing daily the number of people in each county who have cast a ballot and publicly posting reconciliation reports on the county website.