Ga. top court refuses GOP bid to restore last-minute election rules
ATLANTA, Ga. - The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by national and state Republicans to immediately reinstate recently ed election rules that a judge had ruled were invalid.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox last week ruled that the Georgia Election Board didn’t have the authority to adopt the new rules, and declared them “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”
The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party had appealed that ruling to Georgia’s highest court. They asked that it be handled in an expedited manner and for the rules to be reinstated while the appeal was pending.
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The Supreme Court declined the request for expedited handling and declined to put Cox’s order on hold.
The court’s order says that once the appeal is docketed it will “proceed in the ordinary course,” which means it will likely take months before there’s a ruling.
The rules included three that have gotten a lot of attention. One would require three poll workers to count ballots — not votes — by hand once polls close. The other two had to do with the process to certify county election results.
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Early voting in Georgia started last Tuesday for the November elections, setting the stage for the Peach State being a hotly contested swing state in the race for the White House.
The three-person Republican majority on the State Election Board, which was praised by former President Donald Trump during a rally in Atlanta in August, voted to adopt multiple rules in August and September over the objections of the board’s lone Democrat and the nonpartisan chair. There have been at least half a dozen lawsuits filed in response, each challenging one or more of those rules.
Given the tight timeframe with the November general election just weeks away, judges have acted quickly to set and hold hearings in those cases.
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“There’s a lot at stake, a lot of rights at stake, a lot of what could happen depending on who gets in office,” said Richmond County voter Amaya Swafford.
As president of the state’s association of election officials, Richmond County Board of Elections Executive Director Travis Doss had campaigned against the hand-count rule.
Now he’s glad it’s on hold.
He says the reasoning behind the new rule was transparency, which he agrees with.
He says the issue he has with the rule is the timing.
People are already voting across Georgia.
“When you see that kind of turnout, I feel that it shows the voters are energized,” said Doss.
Democrats had raised concerns that the rules could be used by allies of Trump to slow or deny certification or election results, or to cast doubt on results if the former president loses the presidential election to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
While some prominent Republicans in Georgia, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have criticized the flurry of last-minute rules the State Election Board introduced, the state and national Republican parties have been ive. They have said the rules promote transparency and ability in the state’s elections.
Cox’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Eternal Vigilance Action, an organization founded and led by former state Rep. Scot Turner, a Republican. The suit argued that the State Election Board overstepped its authority in adopting the seven rules.
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More than 200,000 Georgians have requested an absentee ballot and already, 60,000 of them have been returned. But the ballot drop boxes that appeared during the pandemic are now less accessible than they were then.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Turner said he was glad for the election workers, who will not have to be trained on new election rules with just two weeks to go before Election Day.
“I hate fighting my friends,” Turner said. “It’s unfortunate that the Republican Party has apparently lost their affection for defending constitutional principles like separation of powers. But I’m undeterred and we will continue to fight.”
Turner explained his opposition to the rules:
“Because the State Elections Board, one day, could be controlled by Democrats and I don’t want them to have lawmaking authority,” he said. “So doing it now was really appropriate because if we don’t stand up against unelected bureaucrats making law now when we’re in control. When we’re not in control, we’re not going to have a leg to stand on.”
Republicans challenge more than 63K Ga. voters, but few removed
Thus far, barely 1% of people called into question have been removed from the rolls or placed into challenged status, mostly because counties are disregarding challenges.
The other rules that Cox said are illegal and unconstitutional are ones that:
- Require someone delivering an absentee ballot in person to provide a signature and photo ID.
- Demand video surveillance and recording of ballot drop boxes after polls close during early voting.
- Expand the mandatory designated areas where partisan poll watchers can stand at tabulation centers.
- Require daily public updates of the number of votes cast during early voting.
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