[ad_1]
A Georgia judge decided this week that members of the county election committee may not prevent the authentication of votes due to suspicion of fraud or error.
The ruling, if upheld, calls into question whether local election officials can throw out individual precincts from county vote totals if they suspect fraud or error. A new rule passed by the State Election Commission appeared to allow such exclusions.
If county election board members “were free to play detective, prosecutor, jury and judge and thus refuse to certify election results because of a unilateral finding of error or fraud, Georgia voters would be silent,” said Robert Fulton County Superior Court Judge. McBurney wrote in the decision. “Our constitution and electoral code do not allow this to happen.”
The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections who is also part of a right-wing group that casts doubt on the integrity of US elections. Adams’ attorney argued in court that the new election rule gives county board members the authority to refuse to certify ballots they suspect have been tainted by fraud or error. According to the lawyer’s argument, this power extended to the extent of disqualifying the votes of entire precincts if anything deemed suspicious was found in the returns.
A ProPublica investigation found that if Adams’ interpretation of the rules had been correct, election officials would have been able to exclude enough votes in only a few rural counties to affect the outcome of the presidential race. After former President Donald Trump lost his 2020 re-election bid, Georgia’s Republican lawmakers stepped up efforts to review county election boards one by one, sometimes replacing Democrats and stacking the boards with Trump supporters. Election boards in Spalding, Troup and Ware counties, for example, are now led by election skeptics, including a man who called President Joe Biden a “pedophile” and made sexually derogatory comments about Vice President Kamala Harris. If the judge had accepted Adams’ argument, those county boards would have had the power to exclude ballots from Democratic precincts that in 2020 cast roughly 8,000 more votes for Biden than for Trump.
The chairman of the Spalding County Board of Elections did not comment to ProPublica this month. The chairman of the Ware County Board did not respond to a request for comment. Troup County Board Chairman William Stump said he doesn’t think anyone on the board is overtly partisan. “Everybody’s concern is getting the numbers right and getting them out on time,” Stump said.
McBurney’s decision made it clear that vote exclusions in Democratic districts are not allowed. “If, through research, counting and investigation, a board member discovers what appears to be fraud or a system error, he or she must still count all the votes,” McBurney wrote. The proper course of action is for a board member to “report concerns of fraud or wrongdoing to the “appropriate district attorney,” as required by Georgia law, rather than having professional investigators do the work themselves.
If interested parties dispute the result, the long-standing avenue is to challenge the election in court. “It is important that election contests take place in open court, under the supervision of a judge and the public,” McBurney wrote. “Allegations of fraud on one side are investigated by the opposing party in open court – rather than being ‘adjudicated’ by county board members outside of the public square, resulting in votes being excluded from the final count without due process. assured those voters.”
The ruling is the latest development in a legal battle over whether county election board members have the right to delay or block the certification of election results, which power experts have warned could affect the outcome of November’s presidential election. However, many of the experts emphasize that Certification has long been understood as a non-discretionary obligation for election committee members.
Much of the legal battle was led by Adams, a Fulton County board member and regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network. a lawyer who tried to help Trump oust him the 2020 election in Georgia. Against more than a century of legal precedent, Adams voted against confirmation in the presidential election in Marchhe said he needed more information to investigate the results, but the Democratic majority was lagging behind. Then he is sued the board and the county election directorand asked the court to find that his certification duties were, among other things, “in fact discretionary, not ministerial in nature.”
Then, behind the scenes, Adams began working to change Georgia’s election certification rules, prompting activists to introduce a rule to be adopted by the State Board of Elections that would greatly expand the right of county board members not to be certified. votes deemed suspicious. , as reported by ProPublica. When this rule was first presented to the State Board of Elections, members voted it down as illegal. However, in August, after a moderate Republican member was ousted from the board and replaced by a new majority, all of whom Trump was praised by name at a rallyadopted a version of the rule almost identical to that which the previous majority had found unlawful.
In conflicting court hearings in early October, McBurney discussed Adams’ case and a similar one that pitted the Democratic and Republican National Committees against each other over the mandatory nature of certifying election results. McBurney’s ruling applied only directly to Adams’ claim.
Adams also asked in his lawsuit for the court to grant him greater access to election-related documents and information before the vote is certified. McBurney decided that this information should be provided to him, but because of the delay, he could not refuse to certify the election results.
“This action was brought to ensure that Ms. Adams has access to all the election materials she needs to ensure that Fulton County elections are free of irregularities and to challenge irregularities in the election results,” said attorney Richard Lawson. Adams and the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-allied think tank. “This ordinance preserves your rights in both respects.”
The decision makes it clear that the members of the county board have the same options with which they can challenge election results that are deemed suspicious, the same as before the lawsuit, and do not include a delay in certification.
“I believe that access to the full election process allows all board members to know and trust the true and accurate results before their certification expires,” Adams Lawson said in a statement.
Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director of the voting rights organization All Voting is Local, said in a statement: “Georgia voters won today against a shameless attempt by a prominent voter to reverse his longstanding, routine duty. a certificate at the discretion of the election officials if they do not like the election results.”
Experts expect the ruling to be appealed, meaning the final decision could come much closer to the election.
Neither Adams nor Lawson responded by email about whether they plan to appeal.
McBurney did not rule in the second case heard alongside Adams on another new rule that experts have warned could disrupt elections by stretching an ill-defined “reasonable inquiry” beyond a strict certification deadline. But McBurney wrote that a county board member must “certify the election results in his jurisdiction” by the state deadline.
Legal battles over State Election Commission rules continue. On Tuesday, McBurney heard arguments from the Cobb County Board of Elections on another matter stating that several other new rules are beyond the state board’s authority. That night, issued an order block enforcement of a rule requiring election workers to count votes by hand, warning it could lead to “administrative chaos.” On Wednesday, another judge heard a similar Republican-led lawsuit against the State Election Commission over the new rules. The board has they faced at least seven lawsuits due to recent changes in rules and related measures.
In his decision, McBurney expressed impatience with efforts to change election rules, writing that “key players in the state’s election management system have increasingly sought to impose their own rules and approaches that are either inconsistent or completely contrary to the letter of these laws. .”
Heather Vogell contributed reporting.