Democrats initiate legal action to inhibit implementation of Georgia's rule mandating manual tallying of Election Day ballots.
The latest court case intensifies the ongoing war of words between the Democratic Party and Georgia's Republican-led elections committee regarding a set of questionable regulations implemented recently. These regulations, critics claim, will create post-election chaos in the state.
Supporting Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, the lawsuit contends that the hand-counting regulation breaches state law and exceeds the board's power in approving it. Three individuals aligned with former President Trump on the committee endorsed this new rule in a 3-2 vote earlier this month.
In their complaint, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party of Georgia, and others claim that if the hand-counting rule takes effect, election reporting will experience significant delays in large counties. Election officials will struggle to implement new protocols at the last minute, poll workers won't be trained on the rule, and the security of the ballots themselves could be at risk.
The delays caused by hand-counting, the lawyers maintain, would pave the way for bad-faith actors to allege fraud influencing election results, potentially undermining public confidence in the election results and Democratic candidates specifically.
Before passing the new rules, the office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, alerted the committee members that the new policies probably violated state law and were likely to be discarded by a judge if someone filed a lawsuit.
“These proposed rules aren't anchored to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the exact type of prohibited legislation that agencies cannot institute,” Carr's office told the committee, indicating that the new rules could be easily challenged and declared invalid.
Concerns expressing similar sentiments were voiced by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, who asserted that it was too late to modify the rules for 2024.
A separate lawsuit filed by Democrats against pairs of rules sanctioned by Trump supporters on the state election committee in August will be put to trial on Tuesday. These rules mandate that county election officials conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before certifying them and permit them to “examine all election-related documents created during the election conduct prior to certifying the results.”
The ongoing dispute in politics surrounding the court case and the Democratic Party's lawsuit against Georgia's elections committee highlights the contentious nature of regulations in elections. The confrontation stems from the controversial hand-counting rule that some argue breaches state law and exceeds the committee's authority, as suggested by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr's warning before its approval.
