Judge invalidates Georgia’s new election rules, including those on vote counting and certification

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge has declared seven new voting rules recently adopted by the State Election Board “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued the order Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. Among the rules Cox invalidated were three that had drawn much attention – one that required the number of ballots to be counted manually after polls closed and two that had to do with certifying election results .

READ MORE: Georgia County election officials must certify election results and set rules

The State Election Board, controlled by three Republicans backed by former President Donald Trump, has adopted several rules in recent months mostly dealing with the processes that occur after voting is cast. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but claimed without evidence that widespread fraud cost him victory in the state.

Democratic Party organizations, local election officials and a group led by a former Republican state representative have filed at least a half-dozen lawsuits over the rules. Democrats, voting rights groups and some legal experts have raised concerns that some rules could be used by Trump allies to delay or avoid certification or to cast doubt on the results if he wins next month’s presidential election against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris loses.

A new rule that a judge has blocked requires three different poll workers to hand count the number of ballots on Election Day to ensure that the number of paper ballots matches the electronic counts on scanners, check-in computers and voting machines.

Voters in Georgia make their choice on a touchscreen voting machine that prints out a sheet of paper with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices and a QR code. This is the ballot that the voter places into a scanner that records the votes. The manual count involved the paper ballots – not the votes.

Critics, including many county election officials, argued that a hand count could slow the announcement of election results and place additional strain on poll workers at the end of an already long day. They also said there is not enough time to adequately train poll workers.

Proponents of the rule argued that the count would take additional minutes, not hours. They also noted that scanner memory cards containing the vote counts could be sent to central counting centers in each county while the hand count is completed so that the transmission of results would not be slowed.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Tuesday temporarily blocked the hand count for the November election while he considers the legal grounds. He said the hand count could ultimately prove to be good policy, but it was too close to the general election to implement it now. The state election board could appeal.

Two other new rules that Cox invalidated were adopted by the State Election Board in August and relate to certification. One definition of certification includes requiring county officials to conduct an “appropriate investigation” before certifying results, but does not specify what that means. The other includes language that allows county election officials to “review all election-related records produced during the conduct of elections.”

Proponents argued those rules were necessary to ensure the accuracy of vote counts before county election officials sign off on them. Critics said they could be used to delay or deny certification.