ATLANTA — Georgia’s State Election Board on Friday voted to approve a new rule that requires poll workers to count the number of paper ballots by hand after voting is completed.

The board approved the rule, going against the advice of the state attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office and an association of county election officials. Three board members who were praised by former President Donald Trump during a rally last month in Atlanta voted to approve the measure, while the lone Democrat on the board and the nonpartisan chair voted to reject it.

In a memo sent to election board members Thursday, the office of state Attorney General Chris Carr said no provision in state law allows counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level before the ballots are brought to county election superintendent for vote tallying. As a result, the memo says, the rule is ”not tethered to any statute” and is ”likely the precise kind of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do.”

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last month called the hand counting rule ”misguided,” saying it would delay the reporting of election results and introduce risks to chain of custody procedures.

The new rule requires that the number of paper ballots — not the number of votes — be counted at each polling place by three separate poll workers until all three counts are the same. If a scanner has more than 750 ballots inside at the end of voting, the poll manager can decide to begin the count the following day.

Voters in Georgia make their selections on a touchscreen voting machine that then prints out a paper ballot that includes a human-readable list of the voter’s choices as well as a QR code that is read by a scanner to tally the votes.

The proponents of the new rule said it is needed to make sure that the number of ballots in the scanners at the end of the day matches the number of voters recorded by check-in computers and the number of ballots recorded by the voting machines and the scanners. Memory cards that record the votes at the polling places are what is used to tally votes on election night.

Several county election officials who spoke out against the rule during a public comment period preceding the vote warned that having to count the ballots by hand at polling places could delay the reporting of election night results. They also worried about putting an additional burden on poll workers who have already worked a long day.

The Moorhead Police Department on Friday shared the most detailed information to date on the unsolved homicide of a college student that has been under investigation for 10 years.

Tom Bearson, a standout basketball star from Sartell, Minn., went missing Sept. 20, 2014, just weeks into his freshman year at North Dakota State University in Fargo. The 18-year-old’s body was found in a Moorhead RV sales lot three days later. Little information has been shared publicly since then and no arrests have been made as Bearson’s family and friends await answers and accountability into his killing.

But on Friday, police did what Bearson’s parents do every anniversary: implore those who know what happened to come forward. This time with a level of detail not yet seen in the past decade.

“It is our belief there is information regarding Tom’s time at NDSU and the circumstances surrounding his death which has not yet been shared. Individuals familiar with what happened may have exhibited changes of behavior, to include:

• Altering of physical appearance (change in hair color or cut, growth or removal of facial hair, etc.)

• Change in normal routine, which might include missing work, classes, or appointments

• Unexplained injuries (cuts on hands, bruises, etc.) during the period Tom was last seen alive and then recovered

• Sudden departure from the area after Tom’s death

Recent statewide crackdowns on drunken driving and speeding yielded not only large numbers of offenders but some eye-popping numbers for the highest speeds and blood alcohol levels.

From mid-August through the Labor Day weekend, officers, deputies and troopers from more than 250 agencies across Minnesota made 1,235 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to the state Department of Public Safety (DPS). That total is a slight drop from 1,265 last year and below a 2020 high of 1,649.

The same agencies wrote 68,723 speeding citations for a four-month stretch until Labor Day, reported the DPS, whose extra enforcements are now expanded beyond the month of July, as has been the case in recent years.

DPS officials noted that speeding and impaired driving are among the leading causes of deaths on the state’s roads, and traffic deaths this year are running 11% higher than at this time last year (322 vs. 286).

Through Sept. 15, speed was a factor in 94 traffic deaths this year, according to the DPS. That’s up from 18 at this time in 2023. Alcohol-related deaths on the road in Minnesota are virtually unchanged so far in 2024 v. the same point last year (80 vs. 82).

The DPS pointed out some rather remarkable enforcement examples regarding driving impaired or speeding:

Police in Eagan were called on Labor Day afternoon to the 3900 block of Worchester Drive and saw a 60-year-old woman in the road sitting in a lawn chair. Residents there provided her with the chair after she hit several parked vehicles and passed out. Police gave her a preliminary breath test that measured her blood alcohol content at 0.443%, more than 5½ times the legal limit in Minnesota.

Elsewhere in the state, one other driver on Steele County topped 0.40%, while the next four down the list ranged from 0.36% to 0.373%.