Two rulings restore calm to Georgia elections rules – for now

Two court rulings in Georgia over the last week have beaten back efforts by Republican activists to empower political challenges to November’s election results, though the expected legal fight over the election is far from concluded.

Robert McBurney, a Fulton county superior court judge, ruled on Tuesday that elections officials had a legal obligation to certify an election, leaving disputes over results and allegations of misconduct to investigation by local district attorneys offices. The ruling rejected the assertion of Trump-aligned attorneys working with Julie Adams, a Republican appointee to the Fulton election board, that election board members could exercise their discretion in certification.

A day later, another Fulton county superior court judge, Thomas Cox, issued a stern order after a short hearing, invalidating seven rules made by Georgia’s state election board this year. One of the invalidated rules required ballots to be hand-counted on election night. A second allowed elections officials to conduct a poorly defined “reasonable inquiry” into discrepancies before issuing a certification. And a third would have required elections officials to turn over volumes of documents to board members for review before certification.

The rules, passed by a three-person bloc of Trump-aligned board members on the five-person board, were “unsupported by Georgia’s Election Code and are in fact contrary to the Election Code”, according to the ruling, which added that the state election board lacked the authority to create rules that go beyond state law. The ruling sharply limits the power of the state election board to make further rules.

The Georgia Republican party said it would appeal the ruling, while voting rights groups hailed the victory.

“Striking down the state election board’s hand-count and other rules is a major win for voters, election integrity, and democracy as a whole,” Nichola Hines, president of the League of Women Voters of Georgia, a plaintiff in the suit challenging the state election board, said in a statement. “These rules were introduced with bad intentions and aimed at causing chaos in Georgia’s secure elections process. The League remains committed to standing up for Georgia voters every step of the way.”

The state election board’s rule-making put them at odds with many county elections directors, voting rights advocates and the attorney general’s office, which advised them that the rules they were considering would probably be found unconstitutional.

Janelle King, one of the three board members Trump praised as “pit bulls for honesty, transparency and victory” at an Atlanta rally earlier this year, defended the board’s actions in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on its Politically Georgia podcast on Thursday.

“I feel like the benefit in all of this is that, I hope people see that has never been and isn’t a partisan issue,” she said. “A Republican brought this case against us,” she added, referring to Scot Turner, a retired Georgia state representative who was a plaintiff suing the board.

With regard to the hand-counting of ballots, King said that the board’s rule-making was meant to ensure an accurate vote count.

“This is not saying anything sinister is going on,” King said. “We keep talking about human error. If we know there’s going to be human error, then it’s important for us to create rules that are surrounded by laws that allow us to plug that hole. That’s what I thought I was doing and what I will continue to do.”

Voting rights organizations disagree with her characterization of the board’s rule-making.

“The 11th-hour rules adopted by the state election board only serve to cause disruption to the electoral process and confusion for voters,” Campaign Legal Center’s voting advocacy and partnerships director, Jonathan Diaz, said. “We are glad one state court has agreed that the hand-count rule cannot go into effect for the upcoming election and we encourage other courts to follow suit.”

The board itself is under fire by Democratic lawmakers, who see its members as partisan in ways that may violate the law. A suit by the Georgia state senator Nabilah Islam-Parkes, former Fulton elections board chair Cathy Woolard and state senator-elect Randall Mangham sought to force Governor Brian Kemp to investigate the board for conflicts of interest and potentially remove some of its members.

Judge Ural Glanville dismissed the suit earlier this month, ruling that the Democrats could not simply label their accusations “formal charges” and compel the governor to act.

The three have appealed the ruling, Mangham said.

“Look, these people clearly have conflicts of interest and ethical violations and are intentionally violating the law,” Mangham said. He referred to comments by one state board member, Rick Jeffares, who suggested his interest in becoming a regional Environmental Protection Agency director to a former Trump campaign aide. “This atmosphere is coming from a rogue elections board. Just a few rogue people. These people who are lining up for a job in the new administration … it’s like an umpire is lobbying for a job on the team and can then go and call a play fairly. And then you don’t want to investigate it?”

The last-minute rule changes struck down by Georgia judges would never have happened under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the US supreme court, Mangham said. “The preclearance requirement would keep all of this from coming.”