Georgia judge rules county election officials must certify election results by Ella Lee - 10/15/24 9:59 AM ET
A Georgia judge ruled Tuesday that county election officials may not delay or decline to certify election results based on suspicions of fraud.
Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney wrote in an 11-page ruling that the local officials have a “mandatory fixed obligation” to certify results, rejecting claims by Fulton County election board member Julie Adams.
He emphasized in a footnote that concerns about fraud or systemic error should be shared with the appropriate authorities but are “not a basis” for an official to decline to certify.
“If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” McBurney wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.”
Adams, who voted against certifying Georgia’s presidential primary in March, claimed she was “unable to fulfill her oath of office” after other county officials declined to provide her with scores of election documents she requested ahead of the certification deadline.
“There are no limits placed on this investigation (other than, of course, the immovable deadline for certification, discussed below),” McBurney wrote. “Thus, within a mandatory ministerial task — thou shalt certify! — there are discretionary subtasks. The freedom allowed with the subtasks does not convert the overarching fixed obligation into a discretionary role.”
The judge’s ruling comes as challenges to the state’s election rules are piling up. Sign up for the Morning Report The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox.
By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use, have reviewed the Privacy Policy, and to receive personalized offers and communications via email, on-site notifications, and targeted advertising using my email address from The Hill, Nexstar Media Inc., and its affiliates
Earlier this month, McBurney held a bench trial over two new rules created by Georgia’s State Election Board, which would allow for a “reasonable inquiry” to be conducted before election certification and gives election workers the ability “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”
At that hearing, McBurney repeatedly insisted that county officials have no choice but to certify the results of an election. He has not ruled on the matter.
The judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday in another lawsuit filed against the State Election Board, this time by Cobb County’s election board. It seeks to squash six other rules — one being a controversial requirement to complete a hand-count verification on election night.
A growing number of Republican county election officials have refused to certify election results since 2020; at least 19 Georgia county election board members have shirked the duty in that time frame, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia is one of seven critical battleground states expected to determine who wins the White House this fall. Former President Trump won the state in 2016 but lost it by just 11,779 votes to President Biden in 2020; the Republican nominee is currently polling 1.1 percentage points ahead of Vice President Harris in the state, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s latest aggregation.
Georgia judge blocks ballot hand count rule from taking effect before election by Ella Lee - 10/15/24 10:21 PM ET
A new Georgia election rule that would require a hand count of ballots on election night will not take effect before November’s contest, a state judge ruled.
In a decision late Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney agreed to block the rule’s application, writing that the public is “not disserved by pressing pause.”
“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy,” McBurney wrote in an 8-page ruling. “Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”
The rule, passed by the Republican State Election Board, was set to go into effect Oct. 22, just two weeks before the election, and after early voting in the state is underway.
Under the rule, three poll workers at each facility would have been required to count the physical ballots – not votes – “separately” and “independently” in stacks of 50 until all three counts matched. The hand count would be completed on election night unless a scanner had more than 750 ballots by the end of voting, at which point a poll manager could push counting to the next day.
Election officials and poll workers vocally objected to the change, warning that hand-counting ballots is overly burdensome and prone to error. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has called the rule “misguided” and suggested it would delay the reporting of election results.
Additionally, the state would have little time to train poll workers under the new guidance. During a bench trial over the matter Tuesday, a lawyer for the Cobb County Board of Elections told McBurney that 444 county poll officers would have to be trained to comply with the new rule. Sign up for the Morning Report The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox.
By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use, have reviewed the Privacy Policy, and to receive personalized offers and communications via email, on-site notifications, and targeted advertising using my email address from The Hill, Nexstar Media Inc., and its affiliates
Lawyers for the State Election Board pushed back by saying the panel was tasked by Georgia’s Legislature with defining election rules – and put under no time constraints to do so.
McBurney said in his ruling that his decision was not final and would be further detailed at a later date, but not until after the election. He said that the county election board made a sufficient showing of irreparable harm, pointing to the chaos that could ensue if the “11th-and-one-half hour” rule was implemented.
“Our Boards of Election and Superintendents are statutorily obligated to ensure that elections are ’honestly, efficiently, and uniformly conducted,’” he wrote. “Failure to comply with statutory obligations such as these can result in investigation by the SEB, suspension or even criminal prosecution.”
He added, in parentheses, “While the latter is far-fetched, it is not an impossibility in this charged political climate.”
The judge did not issue a decision on five other rules, which were discussed at the hearing Tuesday, nor weigh the merits of the hand-count rule. The Cobb County election board did not seek to halt implementation of the other rules.
The Democratic National Committee intervened in the case. Following McBurney’s ruling, DNC acting co-executive director Monica Guardiola, Georgia Democratic Party chair Rep. Nikema Williams and Harris-Walz deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks issued a statement in support of the decision.
“From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it,” they said. “We will continue fighting to ensure that voters can cast their ballot knowing it will count.”
McBurney’s decision is the second major ruling he made Tuesday. Earlier, the judge established that county election officials may not delay or decline to certify election results, rejecting a challenge from a Fulton County election board member who refused to certify during Georgia’s spring primary.
That board member is one of at least 19 Republican county officials in the state who have refused to certify election results since 2020 in a marked increase from previous years, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Georgia is one of seven critical battleground states that could shape the election’s outcome.
McBurney is also weighing two other new State Election Board rules, which would allow for a “reasonable inquiry” before election certification and let election workers “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.” He has not issued any decision on the matter.
Republicans challenge more than 63,000 voters in Georgia, but few removed, AP finds By JEFF AMY and CHARLOTTE KRAMON, Associated Press Oct 15, 2024
ATLANTA (AP) — From Georgia's mountains to its Atlantic shore, challenges to the qualifications of voters have rolled in this summer and fall, part of a wide-ranging national effort coordinated by Donald Trump’s allies to enlist Republican activists to remove people they view as suspect from the voting rolls.
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. But those who allege Georgia's voting rolls are bloated with ineligible voters are trying to change that, filing lawsuits and pushing the Trump-aligned State Election Board to order counties to do more.
The Associated Press finds more than 63,000 Georgians have been challenged since July 1, when a law that could make it easier to uphold challenges partially took effect. The AP's survey covered Georgia's 39 most populous counties, as well as six other counties with challenge activity. That’s a big surge from 2023 and the first half of 2024, when the AP found that about 18,000 voters were challenged.
And efforts are spreading geographically. They had been concentrated in majority-Democratic counties in metro Atlanta. But since July 1, 100 or more voters have been challenged in at least 20 counties statewide, including some heavily Republican areas.
As the AP found earlier, county election officials continue rejecting the vast majority of challenges. Fewer than 800 voters since July 1 — mostly in the suburban Atlanta Republican stronghold of Forsyth County — have been removed from the rolls or placed in challenged status. Voters in challenged status can cast ballots if they prove their residence, but counties are supposed to consider removing them next year if they don't vote.
The effort to remove voters has drawn scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department, which in September issued a seven-page guidance memo that aims to limit challenges and block parts of the new Georgia law by citing 1993’s National Voter Registration Act.
Most of the targeted voters appear to have moved away from their listed addresses, and activists argue letting them stay registered invites fraud. Challengers have been aided by tools which rely on change-of-address lists and other documents to help identify people who could be wrongly registered.
“When ineligible voters remain on the voter rolls, it increases the likelihood of those persons voting in our county, which dilutes the legitimate votes of our citizens,” said Marci McCarthy, chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, which sued its county board of elections this month alleging it was failing to hear challenges. “And every vote by an ineligible voter robs us as citizens of our vote.” A room full of angry voters
Often, when counties send letters to challenged voters, no one appears at a hearing to defend their eligibility. But in the Savannah suburb of Bryan County on Oct. 10, a room full of angry voters applauded as the county board dismissed challenges because the person who filed them didn't appear for a hearing.
“I’m frustrated with this entire process, that we all had to be here today," Michael Smith said at the hearing. "I’m frustrated that our state passed a poorly thought-out law that required and allowed somebody to do this to all of us.”
Many Democrats and liberal voting rights activists argue Republicans are challenging voters either to remove Democrats or to sow doubt about the accuracy of elections in advance of 2024 presidential voting. The voter challenge movement stems from fears that long existed about illegal voting but grew to dominate the Republican Party after Trump’s unsupported claims of voter fraud led many to believe Joe Biden didn’t win Georgia in 2020.
“We are amplifying lies and misunderstandings, fundamental misunderstandings, of how election law works,” state Rep. Saira Draper of Atlanta, who was the state Democratic Party’s director of voter protection in 2020, told the State Election Board on Oct. 8.
Opponents say disqualification efforts rest on faulty foundations. They say voters who change their mailing addresses haven't necessarily changed their residences and that some information challengers use is outdated. Particularly under fire are voter challenge tools including EagleAI and True the Vote’s IV3.
“EagleAI is a third-party program that scrapes the internet that was reviewed by county election offices as being worse than the programs that they have already,” Draper said.
But State Election Board Executive Director Mike Coan, assigned by the board to examine whether challenges are being unfairly denied in eight counties, said he believes challengers are providing “a free public service for our state” by helping clean up the rolls. Some counties say challenges compiled using EagleAI don't meet the legal standard to remove a voter, but Coan disagrees.
“When you’ve got people out there who have technology that is far superior, you should be listening, not turning your head and looking the other way,” Coan said.
He concluded the denial of many challenges by counties “goes against the very spirit and the letter of the law.”
“There are thousands and thousands of challenges that have been dismissed arbitrarily,” Coan told board members. He and Trump-aligned board members suggested the board should make statewide rules to guarantee more challenges are heard.
Federal and state law may conflict
Rulemaking would confront underlying disagreements over whether federal and state laws block counties from hearing the vast majority of activists' challenges. Justice Department guidance issued last month suggests some parts of the state law that took effect July 1 are overridden by federal law.
After the 2020 election, the GOP-led state legislature specified each voter can file unlimited challenges against other people in their county. That came after Texas-based vote monitoring group True the Vote challenged 364,000 Georgia voters prior to two U.S. Senate runoffs in 2021. Lawmakers this year enacted another law that defined probable cause for removing challenged voters and said counties could remove voters until 45 days before the election.
But federal law says a state can make systematic changes to voter rolls only up to 90 days before an election. The Justice Department guidance says systematic changes include not only government-led efforts but also challenges compiled using programs like EagleAI.
Even some deeply Republican counties postponed action until January, but a few counties have considered action after the 90-day deadline.
Another disagreement involves challenges to people who have moved.
Through routine voter list maintenance that doesn't require a challenge, officials remove voters who are dead, convicted of felonies, mentally incompetent or no longer living in Georgia.
But federal law says Georgia can only cancel a registration for a voter who has moved if the voter doesn’t respond to a mailing, enters what is called inactive status, and then doesn’t vote in the two following federal general elections. That process takes more than two years.
Challengers, relying on change-of-address lists, have been targeting inactive voters for immediate removal. They argue the waiting period doesn't apply to challenges.
Officials in Democratic counties have routinely disagreed, but some Republican-dominated counties see it differently. Forsyth County has removed or placed in challenged status 635 voters since July 1, according to board minutes, accounting for 80% of challenges upheld in surveyed counties.
Forsyth County remains an outlier, though. For now, voter challenges have had little impact in Georgia. But if courts and the Republican-majority State Election Board smooth the path, that could change. Challengers show no signs of going away.
Responses:
None
442480
Date: October 15, 2024 at 11:02:35 From: Redhart, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: GA judge rules county election officials must certify election...
Trump apparently has plans for Georgia and his embedded "election board" to put the 12th Amendment into play.
Dates to remember are December 11th and Dec. 17th.
Now, if Tom Hartman has this information...I have no doubt the DOJ and other entities also do. Let's hope they can stop Roger Stone's plan.
What would also help thwart these plans is an overwhelming voter response that tells Trump "NO, we do not want you back".