Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney temporarily suspended a rule on Tuesday requiring paper ballots to be hand-counted in Georgia in the upcoming US federal election. The decision comes in an expedited bench trial following the parties’ emergency motions.
The respondents in the case, the Georgia State Election Board (SEB), approved the hand-count rule in late September. The Board aimed to require the poll manager and two sworn poll officers to independently hand-count all of the paper ballots in each precinct in every county in the state. By creating this rule, the Board hoped to “ensure the secure, transparent, and accurate counting of ballots by requiring a systematic process.”
The petitioner, the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration et al., sought a declaration that the hand-count rule, among five other rules introduced by SEB, is invalid and requested an interlocutory injunction or emergency temporary restraining order to suspend the effect of the rule.
Judge McBurney permitted the petitioner’s request for an injunction in his decision, determining they had demonstrated that there was a “substantial threat of irreparable harm.” Similarly, he characterized the rule as “too much, too late” as it would only take effect a week after early voting begins in the state and merely two weeks before the federal election. The status quo will thus prevail in the upcoming election.
According to Verified Voting, hand-counting can be time-consuming for poll workers even for small populations of voters. For example, in the smallest Nevada County, Esmeralda, it took over “seven hours to hand count 317 ballots in the 2022 primary.” Similarly, hand-counting can be expensive, as seen in Mesa County, Colorado, which cost the county $80,000 for one week of hand-counting votes in 2021.
While the hand-count rule will not apply to this federal election, the court has not given its final decision on the validity of the rule. The court has yet to consider the merits of the petitioner’s case and issue a decision as to whether the rule could appear in the future.
