It’s time to include Georgia election workers in policy discussions about safe elections

Safe and secure elections must be a priority for everyone in Georgia. Fortunately, elections in the Peach State have been free of machine malfunctions or significant counting errors, as our exhaustive post-election audits consistently prove that our votes are counted fairly and accurately. 

This, however, has not stopped conspiracy theorists from demanding widespread changes. Whether they’re clamoring for paper ballots to be counted by hand or levying thousands of unnecessary and often poorly researched challenges against their neighbors’ ability to vote, election deniers in our state want to tinker with voting processes that we already know work well and deliver trustworthy results. 

Calling for these wholesale changes, under the pretense of increased security and fueled by disinformation, is an attempt to legitimize unneeded and disproven election reforms. Meanwhile, the experts in the room—election directors who have held their jobs for multiple cycles—are largely ignored. County election directors are the ones who know what voting processes work best, and they’re also the ones who will have to implement any of these proposed changes. 

New systems also come with costs. Time and again, however, Georgia election offices are required to do more work without any increase in funding. Unfounded challenges to voters’ registration statuses have risen exponentially across the state in recent years, sucking up time and taxpayer money from county election offices. At no point have policymakers stepped in to deter these challenges and ease the workload of election workers. In fact, conspiracy theorists only want to add to poll workers’ plates by demanding a hand count of millions of ballots across Georgia, a rule that the Georgia State Election Board passed in September before being blocked by a judge the next month. Changes like these that increase costs without a commensurate increase in funding make the job of election workers far more difficult. They also create a situation where attention is spread too broadly and thinly – creating room for error in a way that didn’t exist before.

It’s essential that county election workers and election offices are prioritized in any debate about our voting system. As we discuss how votes are cast and counted, we need to weigh rational evidence and first-hand experience over misinformation and conspiracy theories. 

The Georgia legislature wrapped up in early April without significant adjustments to how Georgians vote. However, Georgia will soon begin the process of selecting new voting machines, as our current contract expires in 2028. We must ensure rational policymaking guides this decision. This will require lawmakers and other policymakers to bring in experts, make informed, fact-based decisions, and not be influenced by hysteria and fear-mongering. 

With the passage of an elections study committee, Georgia legislators have the chance to lead by example. We hope the committee will seek to alleviate financial burdens to county election offices, assess the best options for list maintenance, and analyze different voting machine choices. 

The worst-case scenario would be to allow election deniers to hijack these conversations. 

But if done right, with the appropriate input from election officials on the ground, the committee could create much-needed reports that light the path toward ever better elections in Georgia. Georgia policymakers can no longer afford to ignore the voices of those who work every day to run our elections while at the same time lifting up dangerous disinformation from those who want to put up barriers around the ballot box.