Republicans have suffered three election rule defeats ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
In a ruling on Wednesday, a Georgia judge blocked a new set of rules introduced by the Republican-led Georgia State Election Board.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox struck down rules that required county election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before certifying them and allow them to “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.”
“The court here declares that these rules are illegal, unconstitutional and void,” Cox wrote in his ruling.
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Republicans claimed they were trying to avoid election cheating, while Democrats said they were trying to introduce chaos and confusion if former President Donald Trump loses the state to Vice President Kamala Harris. The rules had been introduced in August and have been contested ever since.
Cox wrote that the “reasonable inquiry” rule would add “an additional and undefined step into the certification process.”
Republicans suffered a second blow on Tuesday when a different judge struck down a Georgia State Election Board (SEB) rule that all ballots had to be hand counted.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that voters still have a memory of the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol in which Trump supporters claimed election fraud and tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.
“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public,” he wrote.
McBurney noted that the hand-counting rule initially looks like a good idea but will lead to confusion.
“On paper, the Hand Count Rule—if properly promulgated—appears consistent with the SEB’s mission of ensuring fair, legal, and orderly elections. It is, at base, simply a check of ballot counts, a human eyeball confirmation that the machine counts match reality,” he wrote.
Newsweek sought email comment from the Georgia State Election Board on Thursday.
Republicans suffered a third blow when an Alabama court ruled on Tuesday that election officials had no right to remove thousands of voters from the register.
Judge Anna M. Manasco said that the voters were wrongly marked as “inactive.” She also noted that the voters had been referred for criminal investigation.
“As part of this program, they were all reported to Alabama’s chief law enforcement authority for criminal investigation,” said Manasco, adding that “as far as I know, nothing has been done to undo that.”
Republicans said the program was needed to stop illegal immigrants from voting.
