Judge invalidates new Georgia election rules, including ones on ballot hand count and certification

ATLANTA — A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued the order Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. 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.

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

Democratic Party organizations, local election officials and a group headed by a former Republican state lawmaker have filed at least half a 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 results if he loses next month’s presidential election to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

One new rule that a judge blocked requires 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 out a piece of paper with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices as well as a QR code. That is the ballot that the voter puts into a scanner, which records the 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 election results and put an extra burden on poll workers at the end of an already long day. They also said there isn't enough time to adequately train poll workers.

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

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Tuesday had temporarily blocked the hand-count for the November election while he considers the legal merits. He said the hand-count may ultimately prove to be good policy, but it’s too close to the general election to implement it now. The State Election Board could appeal.

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.