Georgia’s Supreme Court rejected a Republican-led effort Tuesday to reinstate seven new election rules, approved by the State Election Board, while also declining a motion for an expedited appeal ahead of Election Day. Among the rules that were deferred: a hand-count of the ballots and after-hour surveillance of voter drop boxes. Photo courtesy of Supreme Court of Georgia
Oct. 22 (UPI) — Georgia’s Supreme Court has rejected a Republican-led effort to reinstate seven new election rules, approved by the State Election Board, before Election Day as early voting is underway in the battleground state.
In a one-page order issued Tuesday, the court declined — in a unanimous decision — to reinstate the rules, while also declining a motion for an expedited appeal.
While the court did not reject the appeal, it declined to fast forward the proceedings.
“When the appeal is docketed in this court, it will proceed in the ordinary course,” the justices wrote.
Tuesday’s decision in Georgia is a victory for Democrats, who filed lawsuits against the rules that Republicans had requested be revived.
The rules would have required election officials to hand-count the number of ballots at each polling place and would have required after-hour surveillance of drop boxes at early voting locations.
Democrats argued that a hand count would delay the election results and that new rules, being implemented so close to the election, would not allow time to train election workers.
“The idea is to muddy the waters over election workers and confuse voters to put out this idea that the election will be up to debate and potentially impacted by fraud,” Michael Adame, senior staff attorney with the Public Rights Project’s Election Protection Hub, told UPI in August.
Other rules would have expanded the number of areas poll watchers could access and would have required election officials in each county conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the results before certifying them.
Last week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox called the rules “illegal, unconstitutional and void.” The Republican National Committee and Georgia Republican Party appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
“This court’s ruling on the stay issue effectively decides whether these new regulations will be in effect for early voting, and possibly for the 2024 election altogether,” attorneys for the Republicans told the court last week.
Georgia is in the midst of advanced voting, which opened Oct. 15, and shattered turnout records as more than 300,000 ballots were cast in the first day.
Georgia has three weeks of early voting and is one of seven swing states. As of Tuesday, more than 25% of active voters in Georgia had cast their ballots, according to Georgia state election official Gabriel Sterling.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, are battling for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. President Joe Biden carried the state in 2020 by 12,670 votes over Trump, becoming the first Democrat to win Georgia since 1992.