Georgia judge blocks ballot hand-count rule from taking effect before election

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 eight-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. Early voting in the state is already 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 elections board told McBurney that 444 county poll officers would have to be trained to comply with the new rule.

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 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 (DNC) 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 joint 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 on the basis of suspicion of fraud, 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, a marked increase from previous years, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Georgia is one of seven critical battleground states that could shape the presidential election’s outcome next month.

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 those.

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