Judge blocks Georgia, key swing state, rule requiring hand count of ballots ahead US elections

A Georgia judge has temporarily halted a controversial rule that would have required election workers to hand-count ballots, a decision that may prevent delays in the reporting of results in the swing state ahead of the upcoming presidential election on November 5.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Tuesday that the hand-count mandate, issued by the Georgia State Election Board in September, would disrupt the electoral process too close to the election. In his decision, McBurney described the rule as “too much, too late” and stated that any changes that introduce “uncertainty and disorder” would harm the public interest.

The new rule, promoted by a pro-Trump majority on the election board, sparked concerns across party lines. Georgia officials argued that manually counting ballots would be redundant, as machines already handle the process. Some critics also saw the rule as a way to undermine confidence in the election results by slowing down vote counting and potentially allowing misinformation to spread if errors occurred in human counting.

This ruling comes as election integrity remains a highly sensitive issue in Georgia. In 2020, the state was at the center of controversy when former President Donald Trump allegedly pressured officials to “find” votes to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Georgia is again expected to play a crucial role in determining the outcome of this year’s presidential race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a separate case on Monday, McBurney ruled that local election board members must certify vote results, rejecting a lawsuit that sought to make certification discretionary. Julie Adams, a Republican appointee to the Fulton County Election Board, had refused to certify the results of the state’s presidential primary earlier this year. She claimed that election certification should be left to the discretion of board members, a view backed by the America First Policy Institute, a group aligned with Trump’s campaign.

McBurney dismissed Adams’s argument, writing that election officials have a “mandatory fixed obligation” to certify results and should not act as “investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge” based on their own determinations of error or fraud.

The certification issue is one of several election-related legal battles playing out in Georgia courts ahead of the November vote. Trump is also facing racketeering charges in the state for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.