Voting rights advocates said the rule provides a justification for election deniers on county boards to delay or deny certification if their preferred candidate loses.

Republican supporters of the rule said county election boards shouldn’t just put a “rubber stamp” on election results without knowing they were accurate.

“If elections are conducted fairly and legally and accurately, most of the time, they are certified. So it’s not the end of the world,” Republican State Election Board member Janice Johnston said. “We’re not asking the board to do a full election audit or a forensic audit. We’re just asking for a reasonable inquiry.”

Seeger Gray/AJC

Seeger Gray/AJC

But the rule doesn’t say what a “reasonable inquiry” includes, and several Republican election board members in Georgia have refused to certify recent elections, including during this year’s primaries and last year’s local elections. In each case, they were overridden by their board’s majorities.

“The word ‘reasonable’ is inherently subjective. Georgia has 159 counties. What’s reasonable to board members in one county may not be reasonable to members in another county,” Nikhel Sus, an attorney for the liberal-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the board. “This sort of open-ended language invites arbitrary and patchwork decision-making across counties.”

Georgia law says county election boards “shall” certify elections, a legal requirement to finalize results a week after the election on Nov. 12.

A county’s failure to certify an election could throw the results into a dispute that would have to be settled by the courts before Georgia’s statewide election certification deadline Nov. 22.

“These proposed changes are an egregious attempt to upend our elections and could be used to delay and obstruct the certification of Georgia’s 2024 election results,” said Georgia House Minority Whip Sam Park, a Democrat from Lawrenceville.

Seeger Gray / AJC

Seeger Gray / AJC

The rule was proposed by Michael Heekin, a Republican election board member in Fulton County who voted against certifying this year’s presidential primary because he was concerned about ballot security.

“You have to look at how was the election run? Were there problems? Was it a carefree election or was it snakebit?” Heekin told the state board. “What’s reasonable and what isn’t depends upon the facts.”

State Election Board Chairman John Fervier opposed the rule because it lacked clear standards for a “reasonable inquiry.”

“I’m sympathetic to boards being able to look at documents prior to certifying,” said Fervier, an appointee of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. “I also believe there should be some guardrails around that. There don’t appear to be any guardrails around that process.”

The rule doesn’t require a new state law, which still mandates certification as part of the election process.

Under the new rule, critics say, county election board members could vote against certifying elections if they felt an inquiry was inadequate or the results were in doubt.

“It allows for exploitation and not for actual participation in a thorough election canvass process,” said Sara Tindall Ghazall, a Democratic appointee to the State Election Board who voted against the rule.

The board is also considering another rule that would allow county election board members to demand to review any election documents before certifying results. Ghazal has said the rule, which is planned for a final vote in two weeks, could enable local election officials to refuse to certify until they review long lists of documents.

State Election Board member Janelle King, one of the Republicans celebrated by Trump as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory,” said the former president’s comments didn’t influence her decisions.

“There’s a lack of confidence in our election process,” King said. “If I’m going to ask a county election worker to sign their name on a legal document saying this is accurate, when in fact, they may see that there’s some discrepancies ... then we’re setting them up for failure.”

Georgia certification definition

”’Certify the result of a primary, election, or runoff,’ or words to that effect, means to attest, after reasonable inquiry, that the tabulation and canvassing of the election are complete and accurate and that the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.”

Source: State Election Board rule