Georgia
Georgia GOP election official appeals decision mandating vote certification
A Georgia election official filed an appeal Wednesday after a judge ordered election leaders must certify election results by the legal deadline even if they suspect fraud or mistakes.
Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County election board, filed a notice of appeal to the Georgia Court of Appeals after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled last week that election officials were required to certify the election by the legal deadline.
Adams is specifically appealing the parts of McBurney’s ruling that require she certifies election results by the deadline even if she “finds fraud or abuse, or other palpable error,” according to the emergency motion. Adams is also arguing that the remedy provided in the order is “improper and insufficient … if she finds fraud and abuse.”
MILLIONS OF VOTERS HAVE ALREADY CAST BALLOTS FOR NOV. 5 ELECTION
Adams initially filed suit seeking declaratory judgment, arguing she was “entitled to ‘full access’ to what she has identified as ‘election materials.’”
McBurney granted in part and denied in part the relief requested. McBurney wrote in the order that “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.”
A Georgia election official filed an appeal Wednesday after a judge ordered Fulton County election leaders must certify election results by the legal deadline even if they suspect fraud or mistakes. (Getty Images)
The order also stated that officials may investigate their concerns alongside related documents so long as “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”
The remedy Adams is appealing states that members are not left without “recourse or the means to voice substantive concerns about an election outcome,” saying that such contests “arise after the ministerial act of certification.”
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Election results must be certified by Georgia’s individual counties by 5 p.m. the Monday or Tuesday after the race.
The initial ruling was handed down the same day Georgia citizens headed to the polls for early in-person voting, which runs until Nov. 1.
A voter holds up her sticker after casting her ballot for the primary election March 12, 2024, in Atlanta. (Megan Varner/ Washington Post)
Adams had voted against certifying the presidential primary results in May. She proceeded to sue the Fulton County elections board, arguing she was unable to fulfill her duties as a superintendent after a documents request was denied. She had asked for additional documentation related to the election ahead of the certification deadline.
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Georgia is a swing state in this year’s election. President Biden won the state in 2020 by less than 1%. (AP/Alex Brandon/Mike Stewart)
Georgia is a swing state in this year’s election and was won by President Biden in 2020 by less than 1%. There are multiple lawsuits unfolding in the Peach State challenging a new measure passed by the state board of elections that would require county officials to hand-count ballots after they are tabulated by a machine on election night.
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Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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