ATLANTA — The Georgia State Election Board resumed its business Monday morning with some discord among members. Disagreements were expressed about the board's actions, media reporting about the board, and statements by board members following last Friday's meeting, at which, among other decisions, the board passed a rule for hand-counting ballots to check machine numbers on Election Night.
Board member Dr. Janice Johnston began with a statement decrying what she called the "irrational and widespread panic" that followed the passing of several rules on Friday.
RELATED: Georgia State Election Board passes several rules, including one on hand-counts of vote totals
Many of the proposed rules on Friday's agenda were deemed outside the Board's authority in an opinion published by Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr. Democrats and liberal voting rights advocates also contended they would create grounds for challenging the certification of election results and open up the possibility of "chaos" following the election.
Johnston rejected those contentions, saying the board is "trying to avoid chaos" and that the rules will "help to prevent a last-minute surprise of questioning the results about the count, or audit, or recount" and not cause any delays in election night results reporting.
The most prominent rule passed Friday would have three election workers (the poll manager and two sworn poll officers), in a description by the Georgia Secretary of State's Office "unseal ballot boxes, remove and record the ballots, and have three poll officers independently count them." The purpose would be to check that the total number of votes cast at the precinct is consistent between the machine-produced number and the hand-count number.
Johnston contended that the media framed this rule as a "scary fairy tale or perhaps an end of the world apocalypse tale."
"Many articles and reports indicated a limited understanding of the election process. We don't have an agenda, but the media does," she said. "They make money by creating a news story where none exists and promoting division and opponents use this division for fundraising."
Her comments were followed by a back-and-forth involving board members Janelle King and Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the board.
King, Johnston and Rick Jeffares have formed a 3-2 majority on the board that's been receptive to the various rule change proposals submitted by the public. Former President Donald Trump has highlighted them as "pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory."
King spoke against Ghazal's appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program, and the notion that the board was pushing a "MAGA agenda" aligned with the Trump campaign.
"I'm concerned about the fact that you are going on national TV and making an assumption that we are working on some agenda... because I haven't spoken to the Trump campaign, I have nothing to do with the Trump campaign," King said.
Ghazal had expressed her concern with the Board taking up rule changes submitted by the public, which she characterized as a break from how the board has historically operated.
She said those rules had been "promulgated by people who are on the record denying the results of the 2020 election... this Board has never seriously considered a petition for rulemaking that has come from outside until two months ago."
"This is not the process that we have used for decades to promulgate rules," Ghazal said.
After the two debated, Board Chairman John Fervier -- who joined Ghazal in the 3-2 minority on the vote over hand-counting ballots -- said he thought it was "highly inappropriate for this Board to have these kinds of conversations in the public like that."
"Just gotta do it, we gotta protect our integrity. We're continuously being attacked... the same things you're accusing of us are the very things that the media is doing. They're writing narratives, they're creating these headlines, they're calling us MAGA right-wing extremists," King said. "They don't even know who we are."