The Georgia State Elections Board has been accused of voter suppression after it introduced new rules ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The three Republican members of the Elections Board voted for the changes, while the two non-Republicans on the board voted against them. The new rules give local officials more power to challenge election results by implementing a new vote-counting policy that states that if a result in a precinct is contested, all votes must be counted by hand to ensure they match the official vote count.

A year ago, a grand jury in Georgia accused Trump and others of illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. The former president has denied all allegations against him and repeatedly said the case was part of a political witch hunt against him because he was the Republican presidential nominee.

The case has been delayed ever since, with no prospect of a trial. Previously, one of the former president’s co-defendants, Michael Roman, a Trump campaign staffer and former White House aide, alleged in a court filing that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis improperly entered into a romantic relationship with attorney Nathan Wade, whom she had chosen to lead the prosecution of Trump and 18 others.

The new rules allow local election officials to refuse to certify elections until the dispute is resolved.

Critics say the law is being introduced so that if Donald Trump loses the election, he can again challenge the result in Georgia and start a process of disruption and delay.
The three Republican board members voted to adopt the new measures, while the other two members, a Democrat and an independent, voted against them.

Newsweek asked the Georgia State Election Board and the Trump team for comment via email on Wednesday.

The proposal was presented to the board by Salleigh Grubbs, chairman of the Cobb County Republicans.

“We as citizens of Georgia need to be assured that what is printed on our ballots is absolutely accurate. And the only way to ensure that is to have a handwritten indication of affiliation at the precinct level,” Grubbs told the panel at Monday’s meeting.

The voting rights organization Fair Fight said the rule changes were being introduced so that Republicans could disrupt the election if Trump were to lose.

“Trump and his MAGA allies have taken over the Georgia State Electoral College to give a semblance of legality to their illegal plan to prevent the certification of Georgia’s 2024 election results,” Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight, said in a statement.

“Many of Trump’s key election denial allies and Republican Party officials are behind these illegal, anti-liberty changes to Georgia’s election rules, all with the goal of helping Trump win the Peach State even if he doesn’t get a majority of Georgians’ votes.”

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials (GAVREO) is also against the new rules.

Legal analyst Joyce Vance also condemned the changes. The former Alabama prosecutor is a liberal commentator and a frequent critic of Trump. “Voter suppression is nothing new in the South. But anti-voter activity is on the rise in Georgia because the state, which gave its 16 electoral votes to Joe Biden and two senators in 2020 to form the Democratic majority in the Senate, is firmly in play in 2024,” she wrote on her legal blog. Civil discourseon Tuesday.

“The most significant rule change that the three board members – each of whom challenged the outcome of the 2020 election – pushed through just before this year’s election is one that allows local election officials to delay or deny certification if they have concerns about the outcome. No standard has been established for judging whether those concerns are legitimate,” she wrote.