A Georgia court has ruled that election certification is mandatory in the state, and election boards must certify the results.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:
Certifying elections is a required duty of county election boards in Georgia, and they’re not allowed to refuse finalizing results based on suspicions of miscounts or fraud, a Fulton County judge ruled Tuesday.
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“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,” McBurney wrote “Our Constitution and our election code do not allow for that to happen.”
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McBurney ruled that election information should be promptly provided to Adams and election board members, but any delay in receiving information isn’t a basis for refusing to certify elections. All votes must be certified, and election boards don’t have the ability to exclude individual voters or precincts, he wrote.
Judge McBurney will also be hearing a challenge to the six new rules passed by a MAGA controlled Georgia state election board that appear to be designed to block certification of the results in Georgia in a bid to create chaos and undermine the results of the election if Donald Trump loses.
The court has ruled. MAGA election boards can’t refuse to certify the election results if VP Kamala Harris wins.
This is a big blow to Trump’s plan to claim the election was rigged if he loses to Harris. Trump is claiming on a daily basis, including today in Chicago, that Democrats are going to “cheat” in the election.
Donald Trump is going to do what he did in 2020 and claim that the election was stolen if he loses. The courts seem to be on to what Trump and MAGA are trying to do, which is why rulings like this one that come before election day are so important to protecting democracy.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
