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Georgia judge blocks ballot counting rule and says county officials must certify election resultsBy KATE BRUMBACKAssociated PressThe Associated PressATLANTA
The State Election Board last month passed the rule requiring that three poll workers each count the paper ballots — not votes — by hand after the polls close. The county election board in Cobb County, in Atlanta’s suburbs, had filed a lawsuit seeking to have a judge declare that rule and five others recently passed by the state board invalid, saying they exceed the state board’s authority, weren’t adopted in compliance with the law and are unreasonable.
Georgia law says county election superintendents — generally multimember boards — “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.In blocking the hand count rule, McBurney noted that there are no guidelines or training tools for its implementation and that the secretary of state had said the rule was passed too late for his office to provide meaningful training or support.
During a hearing earlier Tuesday, Robert Thomas, a lawyer for the State Election Board, argued that the process isn’t complicated and that estimates show that it would take extra minutes, not hours, to complete. He also said memory cards from the scanners, which are used to tally the votes, could be sent to the tabulation center while the hand count is happening so reporting of results wouldn’t be delayed.
Judge 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. Instead, he wrote, state law says a county election official’s “concerns about fraud or systemic error are to be noted and shared with the appropriate authorities but they are not a basis for a superintendent to decline to certify.”
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