Georgia judge blocks rule requiring hand-counting of ballots

GEORGIA

A judge in the closely watched U.S. swing state of Georgia blocked a new rule on Oct. 15 that would have required election workers to hand-count the ballots, a move that could have significantly delayed the reporting of results.

In his ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said the new rule would upend the electoral process just weeks ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential vote and thus "too much, too late."

"Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public," McBurney said, ruling the change would be temporarily halted.

In September, the Georgia State Election Board, led by a pro-Trump majority, issued a controversial rule requiring that counties manually count their ballots, causing alarm in the closely watched swing state.

Georgia officials from both sides of the political aisle have said the count is not only superfluous, machines already count the ballots, but also a potential tool to sow doubt by slowing the process and creating space for disinformation should discrepancies arise via error-prone human counting.

The change is all the more notable given Republican candidate Donald Trump's alleged election tampering in the state in 2020, pushing for Georgia officials to "find" enough votes to overturn President Joe Biden's victory.

In a separate decision on Oct. 14, the same judge ruled that local election board members must certify vote results, a move that could impact the upcoming presidential contest.

McBurney's ruling came after a Republican appointee to the election board in Fulton County, which includes large parts of Atlanta, refused earlier this year to certify the results of Georgia's presidential primary.

Julie Adams, in a lawsuit backed by the America First Policy Institute, a group aligned with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, had sought a judgment from the court that the certification of election results was "discretionary."

McBurney rejected Adams's claim.

"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.

"Election superintendents in Georgia have a mandatory fixed obligation to certify election results."