A judge in Georgia’s Fulton County ruled Monday that election board officials cannot “play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge” by refusing to certify election results based on their unilateral suspicions of fraud and more. The decision is a major setback for a Donald Trump-fueled effort to empower local officials to challenge or block election results in the state that polls show will be very close in November.
The effort was led by Republican Julie Adams, a Fulton County election board member who’s also part of the pro-Trump election denialist group known as the Election Integrity Network. It is headed up by Cleta Mitchell, one of Trump’s allies in his 2020 push to overturn Georgia’s election results.
Adams had refused to certify election results during Georgia’s general and presidential primaries this year. She was the sole member of the board to refuse; afterward, she sued, arguing that county election officials wouldn’t allow her to do her job or fulfill her oath by delaying her access to records and information that she deemed “essential.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney acknowledged that Adams has duties to uphold as a member of the board that are technically discretionary.
Board members are imbued with powers to conduct primaries and assess that they are unfolding “honestly, efficiently and [are] uniformly conducted,” the judge wrote.
They are also allowed to determine a need for election information and consult staff or other members of the board, and that information, under the law, should be provided to them reasonably.
But “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify election results or abstaining from doing so,” McBurney found.
In terms of certification of election results, Adams’ role and the role of other board members in this respect is “ministerial.”
“Regardless of the characterization of the election superintendent’s role in certifying election results, that certification … is mandatory,” the judge wrote. “Consequently, no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.”
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McBurney continued: “If election superintendents were, as plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced. Our Constitution and our election code do not allow for that to happen.”
Should election officials have concerns over fraud, Adams and board members are welcome to take them up in the courts.
There are “no limits” placed on Georgia election officials other than the existing and “immovable deadline for certification,” according to the ruling.
McBurney is expected to issue another decision in the coming days over a challenge Democrats launched against a controversial policy implemented in Georgia in August that gave county election officials authorization to conduct ill-defined “reasonable” inquiries into contested results.
