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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone, and happy Tuesday. Election day is now six weeks away. When we know the results of the presidential election is anyone's guess. It became even more uncertain on Friday when the Georgia State Election Board passed a requirement for all the ballots in the state to be counted by hand. This is purportedly to prevent election fraud, but it's a problem that no evidence says exists to any meaningful degree in Georgia. The vote on the five-member board was 3 to 2.

By way of background, I want to play a couple of clips. Donald Trump held a rally in Georgia last month at which he praised these three members of the Georgia State Elections Board by name and said they were helping him achieve victory. Even as they hold these jobs, which you might think are supposed to protect the voting rights of all people, all people in Georgia in this case, regardless of their politics, these three election board officials even attended this August 4th Trump rally. In this clip, Trump actually thanks these election officials by name. The video shows him pointing to them in the crowd.

Donald Trump: I don't know if you've heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way-- This is a very positive thing, Marjorie. They're on fire. They're doing a great job. Three members, Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King. Three people are all pit bulls, fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory. They're fighting. Are they here? Where are they? Where are they? Where are they? Thank you. What a job. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: That from the August 4th Trump rally in Georgia. Those three members of the State Elections Board voted in the hand-counting rule last Friday, voted in favor. The vote was 3 to 2. By contrast, voting no was the chair of the board, himself a Republican appointed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp. His name is John Fervier. Here he is on Atlanta's Channel 4 TV.

John Fervier: My position is a nonpartisan position, so I don't participate in any partisan activities at all as a board member. The other board members, whether they participate in something, it's up to them.

Brian Lehrer: John Fervier, after that Trump rally that we played the clip of. We'll talk now about this latest development from the battleground state of Georgia and put it in the context of what to expect overall after all the votes are cast by November 5th with Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. Ari, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Ari Berman: Great to talk to you again, Brian. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Can you first explain the rule the Georgia Elections Board passed on Friday? What does it actually do?

Ari Berman: What the latest rule does is it gives counties the requirement that they have to hand-count the number of ballots. Now, they're not actually hand-counting votes. What they're doing is they're essentially comparing the votes from the electronic voting machines, which give a paper receipt with the hand-count of votes. They basically have to compare these two things, and if the counts don't match, they have to keep counting. The fear here is that this is going to make counting take longer. There could lead to discrepancies in votes, and it could also be more error-prone because of human error.

These are election officials that have been working long hours, and they're going to have to have this additional requirement right before the election. It could be used as another pretext, potentially, by Republican-dominated boards not to certify the election if a Democrat wins. Remember, Brian, this is not the only rule change the board has passed. They have also told counties that they must undertake a reasonable inquiry before certifying elections without specifying what that reasonable inquiry would entail.

They've also given election officials access to what they call all election-related documentation. There's all of these new requirements in place that potentially could be weaponized by Republicans that don't want to certify an election for some political reason or another.

Brian Lehrer: On the Friday vote in particular, the way you just clarified and explained it is that they are not actually counting who voted for who by hand. They're just counting the number of ballots in each place to see if it matches the number of ballots that the computer generates account for. Is that so bad?

Ari Berman: Yes. It's not as bad as the hand-counting of votes overall because hand-counting ballots is a lot more error-prone than automatically doing it through a machine. It also takes a lot longer. This is another thing that could slow down the vote count. The worrisome part of it is that Donald Trump has already been on record weaponizing slower vote counts.

Remember what he did when it took longer to count mail ballots in 2020? He made it seem like it was some kind of conspiracy when everyone knew it was going to take longer to count ballots. Well, now in Georgia, if it takes longer to count ballots because of a rule that Republicans passed, you may see Trump doing the same kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Just to stay on that, that's a media literacy thing that I know we talked about in 2020 before election day, and then it became a thing. We'll talk about it again right now with you. Of course, as election day gets closer, again, when you're watching the returns on election night, a lot of the states have rules where the votes that get cast that day actually get counted and reported before the votes that were cast early, ironically, because there are rules about when they can start counting and reporting the early votes or the mail-in votes.

It may look on election night like one candidate is in the lead, but the other one actually wins because so many votes have not yet been reported yet. The history suggests, certainly history from 2020, that Democrats vote early or vote by mail a lot more than Republicans do, so you can get this false impression at 10:30 on election night that, oh, Donald Trump is in the lead in State X, but really, the mail-in ballots that tend to go Democrat haven't been counted yet. It's a false impression, but it gives Trump the excuse to say, "Oh, and suddenly in the middle of the night, they flip the result." That's it, right?

Ari Berman: Exactly. Yes, exactly. Basically, the concern here is that in Georgia, all of the rules that they're passing, not just the hand-counting rule, but the other rules are going to lead, potentially make it longer to count votes, and then Trump is going to weaponize any kind of delay to make it seem like something is wrong. You're right, this is a media literacy issue. A lot of education was done into trying to get people to understand that, but yet, there were still 70% of Republicans that believed the election was stolen. Clearly, they're not listening to us when it comes to this kind of media literacy.

There's a lot of disinformation out there already, and there's just a lot of concern about how what's happening in Georgia, even if it doesn't lead to the blocking of the certification of votes, which is, I think, ultimately what Trump wants, even if it doesn't lead to that outcome, it could still lead to an outcome where a lot of disinformation is spread. That could have unknown effects in terms of how it impacts the aftermath of the election.

Brian Lehrer: It was a different thing in Georgia, and I think you were just referring to it. This may have been the reason that Trump at the rally singled out these three State Election Board members. That will give county-level officials more authority to not certify the vote count, right?

Ari Berman: Well, it doesn't give them more authority to not certify the vote count because they're required by law to certify the vote count, but it gives them excuses if they want to try to not certify the vote count. They can say, "We want to undertake this inquiry and we didn't have enough time to do it," or, "We weren't entitled to all the election-related documentation." In Georgia, elections have to be certified the Monday after election day. You basically have six days in which to certify the election.

If county boards want to not certify it, they can point to all of these new rules that were passed by the state board and said we weren't given time to investigate or there was discrepancy of ballots or some kind of thing, some kind of excuse they could give as to why they're not going to certify the election. Now, there's a lot of debate over what would happen here. What election officials at the statewide level are saying in Georgia is that if these counties refuse to certify the election, they're going to be taken to court immediately and they're going to be forced by the courts to certify the election.

That is what occurred in other states where county officials have not certified elections since 2020. In places like Arizona and Nevada and New Mexico, they were forced to certify them. In some cases, the election officials who didn't certify the elections were actually indicted. That said, it's an unpredictable situation of what would happen here. We don't know 100% that the courts would force them to certify. Then, number two, we don't know how Trump would weaponize any kind of county, saying they're not certifying the results.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for Ari Berman, Mother Jones voting rights correspondent, on these developments from Georgia or any other state, because we're going to put this into a national context, like these things that could delay either the certification or just the counting and reporting of the votes in Georgia. Things like these are going on in their own ways in other states that could affect how we learn the results of the presidential election next month and how candidates are able to weaponize any of those delays or manufactured uncertainties. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text.

Going back to the hand-counting the number of votes requirement that got passed on Friday for Georgia, how many people are expected to vote in the state, if you know the rough number, and how long would it likely take to count all the ballots by hand in the way that this new policy requires?

Ari Berman: Well, they're only doing it with election-day ballots. There were actually two proposals, one to hand-count the number of ballots on election day, and one to hand-count the number of early ballots, so all the ballots overall. The early vote ballots, that proposal was voted down. They basically voted to table it. That removed some of the danger because that would have added a lot more ballots. I think probably around 3 million people, possibly more, are going to vote in this election in Georgia. I have to look.

I don't have the numbers for 2020 right in front of me, but I believe that was about the number for the Senate races. I imagine it would be higher in the presidential election. I'm not sure exactly what proportion will vote on election day. I know a lot of Republicans tend to vote on election day in the state, but Georgia also has no-excuse, absentee voting, and early voting. I know the Democrats are going to urge their voters to vote early.

The number of election day voters is not going to be as high as the overall number because a lot of people are going to vote early, but I imagine it's still going to be a large number of people. Also, they're not just counting election day votes on election night. They're counting all the ballots. What that means is that it's already a rush timetable to try to get results out because the Secretary of State in Georgia has said he wants results counted quickly. That is one reason why the Secretary of State has weighed in against this proposal. Also, the state Attorney General has weighed in on this proposal, both against it.

Brian Lehrer: Both Republicans?

Ari Berman: Both Republicans basically saying that, A, the state board doesn't have the authority in Georgia law to do this, but, B, it's going to delay the stated objective, which everyone wants, of trying to get both a quick and an accurate count. It could drag into the next day for sure.

Brian Lehrer: Is this going to court? Is what we're discussing that was passed on Friday not a done deal because the state Attorney General is going to challenge it in court?

Ari Berman: I would imagine if not the state Attorney General, then someone's going to challenge it in court. The lawsuits have not been filed yet, but the other things that the state board did, both the reasonable inquiry requirement and the access to all election-related documentation requirement have been challenged in court by Democrats, and there's going to be a hearing October 1st about this. Those rules could also be blocked before the election.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an estimate, though, if this hand-counting measure is upheld and goes forward, is it going to take a couple of days, a couple of weeks? Do you have any good way to measure the time frame or estimate the timeframe that we'll know the result from Georgia if this stands?

Ari Berman: I would say it's definitely days. I think they're still going to try to get it done on election night or shortly thereafter. I don't think anyone totally knows because this was passed three weeks before the start of early voting, Brian. There hasn't been a lot of time, for example, to plan this thing out, to train election officials. If you listen to the State Election Board meeting, every election official that testified was against this. If you talk to election officials beforehand, which I did, across partisan lines, they were opposed to it, not necessarily for ideological reasons, but just for timing reasons.

They've already trained a lot of their officials. They're already making preparations. Early voting is going to start soon in person. Mail voting is going to start even before that. The election has already begun in certain states, and it's beginning in Georgia quite soon. To have an entirely new requirement that you have to pass, that's a pretty big change right before the election. That makes life pretty hard for election officials who are already under the gun in a state like Georgia and already facing a lot of scrutiny.

Brian Lehrer: With Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. Jerry in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Jerry.

Jerry: Hello, Brian. Great fan. The question at hand, I'm wondering if Ari is familiar with the thread that Anna Bower posted earlier this morning. Cutting to the chase, she recognizes that this rule by the board requires a hand count of ballots, meaning sheets of paper, and her finding is that this would only delay reporting by hours. Your thoughts?

Ari Berman: Yes, I read that analysis. It was very, very detailed. It's possible it could only take hours. It's possible it could take longer, depending on how it works. If the numbers match, there should be no problems, but if for some reason the numbers don't match due to human error or any sort of other explanation, it could take longer here. I think the gist of her piece, which I've heard a lot about, is, first, despite these rules, counties are still going to be required to certify the election.

I share that belief in terms of Georgia law, and I also share the expectation that Georgia officials will be prepared if counties don't certify the election. What I worry about is the disinformation that could be spread if counties don't certify the election and the gap between a county refusing to certify the election and the courts saying that, yes, you do have to certify the election. What if that takes a day, two days, three days, a week? I think Trump is going to be positioned, and not just Trump, but a lot of his followers on social media are going to be positioned to spread a lot of disinformation.

We don't know what that's going to lead to. The last time there was a major dispute over the counting of votes, it led to an insurrection at the Capitol. I think we have to be really nervous about any kind of attempt to slow down the vote count.

Brian Lehrer: The clip we played at the beginning of the segment from the Trump rally in Georgia last month, where he cited by name these three members of the Georgia State Election Board who have now voted in this policy and called them pit bulls fighting for transparency and victory, they attended the rally of one of the candidates, and the chair of the election board, also a Republican, said he doesn't represent any political party and he can't comment on what the others do. Well, those three are a majority on that five-member board.

Was that shocking to you that members of a State Election Board would go to one of the candidates' rallies and take praise from the candidate for being pit bulls for his victory?

Ari Berman: Yes, it was really a shocking development. I think sometimes we become numb to how Democratic norms are being subverted in this country. The fact that Trump would praise these election board members by name when they're supposed to be impartial and that members of the election board would attend it-- I think only one member attended it, but she was in the second row and stood up and received applause. Then just days later, they would pass the rule.

Brian Lehrer: Was it just one? I don't want to be inaccurate on that.

Ari Berman: It was just one that attended the rally.

Brian Lehrer: He would name the three, and then he was pointing to the crowd, so it was just one of them who actually attended? Okay.

Ari Berman: It was Janice Johnston, who is probably the most influential of the three MAGA board members in terms of her time on the board. Then they would turn around just a few days later and pass a rule that could potentially lead Republicans not to certify the election if a Democrat wins. That is very concerning. Remember, Brian, also, Georgia Republicans passed a law in 2021 that changed the composition of this State Election Board so that the Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Donald Trump and refused his demand to fine 11,780 votes to overturn Joe Biden's victory, he was kicked off the State Election Board and he was removed as chair.

They basically took off the leading Republican official who stood up to Trump and they were then replaced. Those establishment Republicans that defended the legitimacy of the election, they were replaced by people that had spread false claims about the election being stolen, and now, they have a controlling majority on the board.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, I want you to do the best you can do to put what we've been discussing regarding Georgia into national context. How many other swing states are going through things like this, even if they're different in the details, that could delay the count or make it easier to delay or not certify the results?

Ari Berman: Well, Georgia is the most extreme example, but there are similar developments happening elsewhere. Since the 2020 election, 35 election officials in eight states have refused to certify election results. They were forced to do so by the courts. I would expect that number to rise with Trump on the ballot. People who were in these election positions in 2020, a lot of them have been replaced. In the case of Republicans who have been replaced, they're likely to have been replaced by an election denier or someone who was skeptical about the 2020 election.

I think a lot of people who believe things that weren't true, some of whom have bad intentions, are now in positions of authority when it comes to administering elections, whether they're poll workers or they're poll watchers or they're election officials at the county level or even at the state level. I think we're going to have to pay a lot of attention to that and make sure that when votes are cast that they're fairly counted because I think of all the disputes that there could be about the election, it seems like disputes over the vote counting could be the largest and the most significant.

Brian Lehrer: Ari Berman is voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and author of the book, recently released, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. Ari, thanks so much.

Ari Berman: Thanks so much, Brian. Great to talk to you again.

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