A Georgia judge ruled on Tuesday against a new rule passed by the state election board’s pro-Trump majority on the state election board that would have required poll workers to hand-count ballots.
Judge Robert McBurney said that as early voting in Georgia has already begun, mandatory hand-counting would create chaos and delay the election results.
“The administrative chaos that will – not may – ensue is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the State Election Board) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal, and orderly,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
The judge did not determine if the new rule was illegal, but paused it pending further review. An appeals court could potentially reverse the decision.
The hand-count rule was introduced by Sharlene Alexander, a Trump supporter and member of the Fayette county board of elections, who was appointed to the board in February 2024. Alexander is one of 12 election deniers who have introduced more than 30 rules in Georgia to the state election board since May.
McBurney also ruled this week that election certification is a mandatory duty for county election officials, not discretionary – rejecting arguments made by a Republican elections official that they could simply refuse to certify an election based on their own suspicion of fraud or error.
“If election superintendents were, as plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so – because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud – refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” McBurney wrote in the ruling. “Our Constitution and our election code do not allow for that to happen.”
The controversial rule changes have been supported by the America First Policy Institute, a legal thinktank created by former Trump advisers after his 2020 election loss to push for legal groundwork for his return to office.
Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020, helping him secure the presidency, but the state has since become a hotbed for election deniers and conspiracy theorists. Nineteen people have been charged in Georgia with attempting to overturn the 2020 election results to keep Trump in power.
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Trump himself currently faces eight charges for his own role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. The case has been temporarily paused pending a review by the Georgia court of appeals of the decision to permit the prosecutor Fani Willis to remain on the case.