An Atlanta judge has blocked a last-minute move by the Georgia state election board to require a hand count of ballots across local precincts statewide in the US presidential contest in November.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Tuesday night sided with challengers who argued the Republican-majority election board risked introducing confusion and delays into the process by adopting the hand-count rule so close to Election Day.
The order wasn't immediately available on the public docket but Gerald Griggs, the president of the Georgia NAACP, posted on social media about the ruling and a second person familiar with the case confirmed the outcome. The decision isn't a final order in the litigation, but will temporarily block the rule from being enforced in the November election.
Lawyers for the state election board did not immediately return a request for comment.
Georgia has become a hot spot for legal fights in the final weeks of the campaign, with the election board facing pushback over newly adopted rules not only from Democrats and left-leaning advocacy groups, but also from county election officials and top state Republicans.
Under the new counting rule, three poll workers in each precinct would have to count the number of ballots after polls close on Election Day before they could be officially tallied at a tabulating center. Local officials opposed the change, and Georgia's Republican secretary of state and attorney general warned the board against approving it.
The board voted 3-2 to adopt the rule on Sept. 20. Since then, the board has faced at least five lawsuits challenging it.
The case before McBurney was brought by the election board for Cobb County, located to the northwest of Atlanta. The Democratic National Committee has its own lawsuit challenging the hand-count rule, but asked to join Cobb County's case as well since it was set for a hearing first. A different judge in Fulton County Superior Court is set to hear arguments Wednesday in the DNC's case.
The board is being sued separately over rule changes adopted in August - also by a 3-2 vote - that changed how counties finalize vote counts. A judge has yet to rule on whether the board's new language, including requiring officials to conduct a "reasonable inquiry" before certifying the results, can stand ahead of November.
Earlier on Tuesday, McBurney released an order declaring county election officials have a "mandatory" duty to certify results and cannot substitute their independent judgment. The judge largely rebuffed a lawsuit brought by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County election board who had refused to certify the results of the May presidential primary and wanted judicial approval to potentially do so again in the Nov. 5 election.
The case is Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration v. State Election Board, 24CV012491, Fulton County Superior Court.
