atlanta news tagged interest

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — An emergency meeting for the Georgia elections board came to a quick conclusion on Friday afternoon in the Georgia State Capitol.

The meeting took place with nearly no notice to the public. Two board members — Sara Tindall Ghazal and chairman John Fervier — weren’t in attendance.

During their regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the board voted on several major issues.

This included endorsing a rule for hand counts at the end of voting days to verify the vote totals given by machines. Another rule passed that may alter the process for certifying elections in Georgia.

Yet that meeting never came to an official close as discussion dragged on about the possibility of the board reopening its investigation into the 2020 presidential election.

Board member Janelle King says if the meeting wasn’t finished Friday, all their work would have been invalidated.

“We’re not doing anything sinister here, we’re literally just ending a meeting,” she said. “We were notified that if we had not had this meeting today, then all the work that was done on July 9 would have died.”

King and Rick Jeffares were the only two board members in the room on Friday.

Janice Johnston was dialed on via Zoom.

“One board member is not going to stop the show, those days are over,” King said. “We are going to move forward and get the job done. We’re going to do it correctly and do it right.”

Kristin Nabers is the Georgia State Director of All Voting is Local, an organization aimed at improving voter access. She was in attendance during Tuesday’s heated meeting at the state capitol.

“It was incredibly long, there were people who wanted to talk about Fulton in 2020 over and over again,” Nabers said. “They wanted to relitigate the 2020 Election again and eat up a lot of time.”

She believes Friday’s emergency board meeting should never have happened.

“This was a circus, as it was disrespectful to the voters and disrespectful to other members of the board of elections,” Nabers said.

Georgia Board of Elections Executive Director Mike Coan told Atlanta News First he was relieved that the meeting finally came to a conclusion.

“I think everybody thought the sky was falling and it didn’t fall today,” he said. “At the end of the day, I just hope we can get this board back together and work together.”

Next week, we’ll expect to hear from the Secretary of State and Attorney General’s office, as questions remain if Friday’s meeting was legal.