Georgia Board Grants Local Officials New Power Over Certifying Elections

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Georgia Board Grants Local Officials New Power Over Certifying Elections

The ***********-controlled Georgia State Election Board approved on Tuesday a measure that could empower local officials to refuse or delay certification of a county’s election results, creating the potential for another disputed and contentious post-election ******* in November.

The new rule states that before certifying results, local officials may conduct “reasonable inquiry” that “the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.”

Though seemingly innocuous, the language implies that local election officials are awarded a level of discretion in the certification process, a suggestion that runs counter to decades of settled Georgia law delineating how results are officially certified. State law dictates that officials “shall” certify an election, making the process effectively ministerial; disputes over alleged ****** or major errors are typically left to recounts and courts.

The decision by the board worried Democrats and voting-rights advocates that the process could be weaponized if former President Donald J. Trump lost in November.

Across the country, ************* organizations and allies of Mr. Trump have sought to create new laws or win court rulings granting local officials more authority over the certification process. In Arizona, conservatives are targeting the state’s election manual with several lawsuits. In Nevada, an official in the state’s second-largest county refused to certify a recent election, setting up a legal test at the State Supreme Court.

And in Georgia, even before the state election board’s meeting on Tuesday, allies of Mr. Trump were seeking a similar resolution in the courts. In May, the America First Policy Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of a member of the Fulton County, Ga., election board, arguing that she had the discretion to refuse certification and conduct an investigation because, as part of her oath, she had sworn to “prevent ******, deceit and ******.”

The legal effort to remake election certification has been accompanied by a surge in local officials’ voting against certification, despite state and federal law dictating differently. Since the 2020 election, members of state and local boards have voted against certification more than 20 times across eight states, according to a list compiled by Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that tracks antidemocratic trends in the ******* States.

Republicans on the Georgia board who voted in favor of the new rule on Tuesday said it was a reasonable step to ensure accuracy.

“We’re not asking for a full election audit,” said Janice Johnston, one of four *********** board members, during Tuesday’s meeting in Atlanta. “We’re just asking for a reasonable inquiry.”

But John Fervier, the *********** chair of the board, said he could not support such a broad rule and argued for specific “guardrails.”

Democrats, election officials and voting rights groups have denounced what they characterize as an effort to destabilize the certification process, claiming it would invite chaos into elections, undermining trust and creating a framework for subversion.

“Inconsistencies in certification could tie up both the counties and the state in expensive and time-consuming litigation,” Kristin Nabers, the Georgia state director for All Voting Is Local Action, a voting rights group, said during the election board meeting. “This could result not only in counties missing the certification deadline but also in undermining public trust and confidence in our elections.”

Fears are also growing that the Georgia State Election Board, which is made up of four Republicans and one Democrat, is under increasingly partisan pressure. The Georgia *********** Party has proposed new rules and made other suggestions to the board, which were

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

At a campaign rally on Saturday, Mr. Trump called out the three *********** members of the board by name. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way,” Mr. Trump told the crowd to loud applause. Characterizing the *********** members as “on *****,” he said they were “three pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

Mr. Trump’s comments were brought up repeatedly at Tuesday’s meeting, as several opponents of the new rule implored the board members to be nonpartisan stewards of Georgia’s elections.

Democrats in the State Legislature argued at a news conference that the new measure was most likely ********.

“Trump-backed state election board members,” State Representative Sam Park, a Democrat, said, “want to change our election rules to give power to local elections officials to halt the counting of votes and slow down or refuse certification if they say there are any irregularities, making the certification of election results discretionary.”

“These certification rules,” he said, “directly conflict with Georgia law, which states in multiple places that local election board officials shall perform their duties — meaning their duties are mandatory, not discretionary.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Georgia #Board #Grants #Local #Officials #Power #Certifying #Elections

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up