Kathy Boockvar and Kim Wyman, former Secretaries of State of Pennsylvania and Washington respectively, sat down with The Hill and USA Today to discuss last minute election rule changes being attempted in Georgia and their potential impact on the 2024 election.
The Georgia state election board is comprised of political appointees without election administration experience, the majority of whom are currently election deniers. At the urging of national election denier activists, they voted for last-minute rule changes that require local officials to conduct undefined inquiries and investigations before certifying election results. These changes not only burden well-meaning election officials with no funding, support, or time to train for and carry out the new tasks but also enable rogue officials to infuse doubt and suspicion and potentially attempt to delay certification of election results.
Boockvar expressed that the voice of Georgia election officials raising profound concerns about the changes is a red flag that shouldn’t be ignored.
She told The Hill: “Here we’ve got a situation where both the chief state election official and local county election officials all agree this is a bad idea, which, to me, is full stop — then, this is a bad idea”.
Wyman expressed to both papers that these changes introduce new variables to an election that officials have been planning for years, without sufficient time to prepare. As she described it to USA Today, “It’s really like changing the rules in the last game of the World Series.”
Boockvar and Wyman also expressed concerns about the new rule’s potential impact of delaying certification and adding another opportunity for errors as well as spreading false allegations and inciting distrust.
“Any effort to delay also is an opportunity to infuse doubt and suspicion and accusations, and we saw that happen in 2020,” Boockvar told USA Today.
“The public confidence in our election system is really what’s at stake in this upcoming election,” Wyman emphasized.