‘No authority’: Georgia election board loses again in court as judge strikes down 7 rules

For the second time in two days, Georgia judges delivered a major blow to efforts by the state’s election board to change the rules governing this November’s election just weeks in advance.

In a late-Wednesday ruling, Judge Thomas A. Cox Jr. struck down seven new rules from the board, including a controversial ballot hand-count rule that another judge had already temporarily blocked on Tuesday. Cox ruled that all seven rules recently passed by the board’s Republican majority contradicted the state’s election laws and exceeded the state board’s authority.

“An administrative agency can only act to implement existing statutory schemes; they hold no authority to create new requirements or otherwise expand their own authority,” Cox wrote.

Members of the state election board didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Lawyers for Eternal Vigilance Action Inc., a conservative advocacy group that sued to challenge the rules’ constitutionality, also didn’t immediately respond to a comment request.

On Tuesday, after the ballot hand-count rule was temporarily halted by a different judge, state board member Janelle King said in a statement that “sometimes the victory lies in the public knowing that the State Election Board is paying close attention to our election process.”

Hand-count rule ‘vastly expands the authority and obligations of poll officials’

The flurry of last-minute changes ahead of the November election prompted Republican and Democratic officials to voice concern in recent weeks.

King and two other Republican members of the five-person state election board – who have been praised by former President Donald Trump as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” – passed the ballot hand-count rule and several other measures despite being advised by Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr that they were probably unlawful. King challenged Carr’s assessment in her Tuesday statement.

The hand-count rule would have required thousands of Georgia poll workers to unseal ballot boxes and hand count the ballots, verifying that the totals match tallies produced by machines and working to correct any discrepancies. Studies have found that hand counts are slower and less accurate than machine counts.

Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger warned the ballot hand-count rule in particular could lead to “error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud.” More broadly, he described a raft of election changes from the state board as “a mess.”

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, a nonpartisan group with more than 500 officials and staff, had also warned the ballot hand-count rule could undermine public confidence in the election and “set fatigued employees up for failure.”

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In his Wednesday decision, Cox described the rule’s hand-count process as “cumbersome,” and said Georgia election laws that spell out poll officer duties once polls close don’t call for hand counting.

“In fact, the rule vastly expands the authority and obligations of poll officials in preparing ballots pre-delivery to the superintendents and pre-certification,” Cox wrote.

The other six rules Cox struck down would:

• Require local officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results
• Grant county election board members access to all election-related documentation created as the election was being conducted;
• Require an absentee ballot deliverer to provide a signature and photo ID at delivery;
• Demand video surveillance and recording of authorized drop boxes after the polls close;
• Broaden mandatory, designated poll-watching areas; and
• Add new requirements for the county board of registrars in reporting absentee ballot information.