As early voting got underway in this crucial battleground state, the Georgia Supreme Court denied Republicans’ bid to reinstate a set of contentious new election regulations that were passed by Donald Trump’s supporters.
For Democrats and others who have challenged the rules in multiple instances, claiming that the board overreached itself in implementing them, this order represents a major win. CNN
One of the seven rules would allow county election officials to “examine all election-related documentation created during the conduct of elections before certification of results,” and another would require them to perform a “reasonable inquiry” into election results prior to certifying them.
According to the source, other proposed regulations would have required officials to manually count the amount of ballots cast at each polling station on election day, allowed poll monitors more access, and required drop boxes at early voting locations to be videotaped after hours.
Georgia has seen a significant early voter turnout in the 2024 election, and the state possesses 16 electoral votes that are important to both Trump and Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Twenty-five percent of the state’s active voters have already cast their ballots, according to a Tuesday announcement from state election official Gabriel Sterling.
The conservative-majority court’s unanimous ruling was technical in nature; rather than addressing the legitimacy of the seven rules, the justices chose not to overturn a lower court judge’s ruling from last week that invalidated them.
While a legal challenge is pending, the State Election Board is prohibited from ordering local election officials to enforce the guidelines by the ruling from Georgia’s top court. This guarantees that this election cycle will not be affected by the regulations.
Republicans’ attempt to speed their examination of the regulations was also denied by the court on Tuesday. The court would consider the case “in the ordinary course,” according to the order.
Eternal Vigilance Action, an electoral advocacy group, brought the case. The seven restrictions “are illegal, unconstitutional, and void,” according to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who sided with them last week, finding that the State Election Board had the legal jurisdiction to impose them in the first place.
The Georgia Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, who had stepped in to protect the regulations, appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court and then asked the justices to step in urgently to restore the restrictions.
Republicans’ lawyers told the court last week that the court’s decision on the stay issue essentially determines whether the new rules will apply to early voting and possibly the 2024 election as a whole.
Promotion
The court rulings this week and last “should eliminate any doubt about the merits of our arguments” against the laws, said Scot Turner, executive director of Eternal Vigilance Action and a former GOP state representative, on Tuesday.
“This is a conservative policy organization, and I’m a Republican. In a statement, he added, “I don’t like to fight my friends, but in this case, loyalty to the Georgia Constitution demands it.” “True conservatives are against giving authority to an administrative state that isn’t answerable to the people directly. The idea that only the elected constitutional officers of the people have the authority to enact laws has won another victory.
Judge Robert McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court temporarily suspended the ballot hand count rule last week in a different case contesting the rule, finding that the “administrative chaos” it would create “is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the SEB) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal, and orderly.”
Republicans’ attempt to speed their examination of the regulations was also denied by the court on Tuesday. The court would consider the case “in the ordinary course,” according to the order.
Eternal Vigilance Action, an electoral advocacy group, brought the case. The seven restrictions “are illegal, unconstitutional, and void,” according to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who sided with them last week, finding that the State Election Board had the legal jurisdiction to impose them in the first place.
The Georgia Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, who had stepped in to protect the regulations, appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court and then asked the justices to step in urgently to restore the restrictions.
Republicans’ lawyers told the court last week that the court’s decision on the stay issue essentially determines whether the new rules will apply to early voting and possibly the 2024 election as a whole.
Promotion
The court rulings this week and last “should eliminate any doubt about the merits of our arguments” against the laws, said Scot Turner, executive director of Eternal Vigilance Action and a former GOP state representative, on Tuesday.
“This is a conservative policy organization, and I’m a Republican. In a statement, he added, “I don’t like to fight my friends, but in this case, loyalty to the Georgia Constitution demands it.” “True conservatives are against giving authority to an administrative state that isn’t answerable to the people directly. The idea that only the elected constitutional officers of the people have the authority to enact laws has won another victory.
Judge Robert McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court temporarily suspended the ballot hand count rule last week in a different case contesting the rule, finding that the “administrative chaos” it would create “is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the SEB) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal, and orderly.”
About The Author
