A judge in Georgia blocked a rule that would’ve required all election ballots submitted on Election Day to be counted by hand after voting closed.
The ruling handed down on Tuesday evening, comes just one day after he ruled that election officials for Georgia’s counties have to certify election results by deadlines that are set by law.
Last month, the State Election Board in Georgia passed a new rule that would require three poll workers to count every paper ballot by hand after the polls came to a close.
Cobb County’s election board, though, filed a legal challenge to that rule and five other recently-passed rules, asking that they be invalidated. The county claimed that the state board exceeded its own authority in issuing the rules, which they said were unreasonable and not adopted in compliance with state law.
In his ruling, Robert McBurney, a judge in Fulton County Superior Court, wrote that the rule for hand-counting ballots “is too much, too late.” He blocked enforcement of the rule while he was considering the case’s merits.
In a separate case just one day before, McBurney ruled that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.”
While these officials can inspect an election’s conduct or review documents related to the election, McBurney added that “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”
According to Georgia state law, all election superintendents at the county — which generally are boards that include multiple people — have to certify the election results by 5 p.m. the Monday after an election, or on that following Tuesday if the Monday falls on a holiday — as it does this year.
The judge’s ruling ironically was handed down on the same day that early in-person voting opened in Georgia.
These rulings are both definitive victories for Democrats and other liberal voting rights groups. Many of them have said that they are concerned that allies of GOP nominee Donald Trump might refuse to certify the election results if Democrat Kamala Harris ends up winning the state during the election next month.
These people have argued that the State Election Board — which is comprised of a majority of people who Trump has endorsed — passed these rules to delay or stop certification, and that they would use them to undermine the public’s confidence in the election results if Trump were to lose.
In his ruling, McBurney further added that there aren’t any training tools or guidelines for implementing the hand counting of paper ballots, and that the secretary or state even said the rule was put into place far too late for his office to be able to provide any meaningful support or training.
In addition, there weren’t any allowances made in the budgets at the county election boards to hire additional personnel or to fund any expenses related to the new rule.
