WASHINGTON – In a major win for election integrity, the Georgia State Election Board has passed important rules to secure Georgia’s elections. These are commonsense safeguards to ensure the election system is fair, accurate, and transparent. 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley stated: “Protecting the vote and ensuring ballots are cast and counted properly benefits all legal voters. This is not a partisan issue – it is commonsense to uphold systems that give every legal vote its due. These steps by the State Election Board are critical to securing the election in Georgia and correcting its long history of chaos.” 

Background: 

• Georgia’s election failures have caused legitimate concern for voters. The State Election Board has taken proactive steps to secure Georgia’s elections and inspire voter confidence, and these efforts are critical now more than ever.
• An important new rule, that the RNC submitted comments in support of, is that the ballot count must match the number of voters – meaning there should not be more ballots counted than voters casting them.
• The rule solidifies and now requires this practice statewide. This is a quick and simple process to make sure that if there are, for example, 1,000 voters, there should be 1,000 ballots counted. No more and no less.
• Additionally, the Board has allowed county election board members to conduct reasonable inquiry to ensure election results are “true and accurate” before certifying them. Board members now have the ability to question and act on potential fraud, or questionable or incorrect results, rather than simply signing off and approving the results when there are legitimate concerns.
• Election officials should be able to ensure that results are accurate before approving them. This is another commonsense measure that ensures voters can have full confidence in Georgia’s elections.
• Forces undermining the security of our elections argue that counties must certify election results no matter what – even if they are fraudulent and illegitimate. The Establishment is fighting hard against these rules because they want to keep election systems that are easy to manipulate, with no transparency and no checks in place to prevent cheating.
• Mismanagement of Georgia’s elections will not stand this year. We applaud the Board for passing these critical rules to ensure Georgia’s elections are transparent and secure – for all voters – for our country’s most important election in history.