Republicans appeal a Georgia judge’s ruling that invalidates seven election rules

By KATE BRUMBACK and JEFF AMY The Associated Press

People leave after voting in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, Ga., on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, the first day of early in-person voting in Georgia. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy)[ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jeff Amy]

ATLANTA (AP) — National and state Republicans on Thursday appealed a judge’s ruling that said seven election rules recently passed by Georgia’s State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”

The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party are appealing a ruling from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who ruled Wednesday that the State Election Board did not have the authority to pass the rules and ordered it to immediately inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed.

The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention — one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

In a statement Thursday announcing the appeal. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley accused Cox of “the very worst of judicial activism.”

“By overturning the Georgia State Election Board’s commonsense rules passed to safeguard Georgia’s elections, the judge sided with the Democrats in their attacks on transparency, accountability, and the integrity of our elections,” Whatley said. “We have immediately appealed this egregious order to ensure commonsense rules are in place for the election — we will not let this stand.”

Alex Kaufman, a lawyer for the state Republican Party, said Thursday that the party filed an emergency notice of appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Eternal Vigilance Action, an organization founded and led by former state Rep. Scot Turner, a Republican. The suit argued that the State Election Board overstepped its authority in adopting the rules.

“Seeing the Republican Party argue that unelected bureaucrats should have the power to make new law is certainly a departure from traditional conservative values,” Turner wrote in a text to The Associated Press. “But we expected them to appeal and are prepared to fight on behalf of reining in this administrative-state power grab as long as we need to.”

The ruling was hailed as a victory by Democrats and voting rights groups, who say rules the State Election Board has passed in recent months could be used by allies of Donald Trump to cast doubt on results if the former president loses the presidential election to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Recent appointments to the five-member board have put three Trump-endorsed Republicans in the majority. They have passed new rules over the objections of the board’s lone Democrat and the nonpartisan chair.

County election officials from around the state — the people who run the elections — have voiced concerns over the flood of new rules taking effect so close to Election Day.

The other rules Cox said are illegal and unconstitutional are ones that: require someone delivering an absentee ballot in person to provide a signature and photo ID; demand video surveillance and recording of ballot drop boxes after polls close during early voting; expand the mandatory designated areas where partisan poll watchers can stand at tabulation centers; and require daily public updates of the number of votes cast during early voting.

One rule that the judge overturned required that three separate poll workers count the number of Election Day ballots by hand to make sure the number of paper ballots matches the electronic tallies on scanners, check-in computers and voting machines.

Georgia voters make selections on a touchscreen voting machine that prints a paper with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices as well as a QR code. The voter puts that ballot in a scanner, which records votes. The hand-count would be of the paper ballots — not the votes.

Critics, including many county election officials, argued that a hand-count could slow the reporting of results and burden poll workers at the end of an already long day. They also said there isn’t enough time for adequate training.

The rule’s supporters argued the count would take extra minutes, not hours. They also noted that scanner memory cards with vote tallies could be sent to county offices while the hand-count is completed so reporting of results wouldn’t be slowed.

Cox wrote that the rule “is nowhere authorized” by Georgia laws, which “proscribe the duties of poll officers after the polls close. Hand counting is not among them.”

Two other new rules that Cox invalidated were passed by the State Election Board in August and have to do with certification. One provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”

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