A Georgia judge ruled on Tuesday that state election boards must certify results on schedule in a blow to former President Trump, a decision that came out on the same day as early voting started in the crucial battleground state.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered supporters of Trump who control county or state election boards that they cannot withhold certification or hold back results from certain areas if they suspect fraud or want to conduct their own investigations into the tallies.
“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance,” McBurney wrote in his ruling. “Any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”
Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are multimember boards in most counties, “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election — or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year with Veterans Day.
Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County election board, had asked the judge to declare that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she is entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”
That was widely seen as a asking for a potential green light to an open-ended partisan process that could delay or derail certification indefinitely, potentially casting doubt on the results in the closely matched Peach State.
Adams’ failed suit, backed by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, argued that county election board members have the discretion to reject certification. In court earlier this month, her lawyers also argued that county election officials could certify results without including ballots that they believe have problems, a move that could open the door to disenfranchising entire precincts or even municipalities.
McBurney wrote that nothing in Georgia law gives county election officials the authority to determine that fraud has occurred or what should be done about it.
The decision coincidentally came out on the same day as Georgia voters started casting ballots during in-person early voting.
Gabe Sterling, Georgia’s chief election officer, said more than 122,000 people had already voted before noon and predicted the tally statewide would eclipse the all-time first day record of about 136,000 in the 2020 election held during the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 5,1 million voters have already cast ballots nationwide. Many non-partisan analysts expect turnout in the 2024 presidential election to be somewhat lower than the 2020 race that Biden won by about 7 million votes over Trump.
Trump lost Georgia by a razor-thin margin of just over 10,000 votes. He sought to overturn that loss by bullying Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into “finding” enough votes for him to win.
