A Georgia judge on Tuesday paused a last-minute rule adopted by Donald Trump’s allies on the State Election Board requiring ballots to be counted by hand.
The judge wrote that introducing an unknown and untested rule at the “11th-and-one-half hour” affecting more than 7,500 poll workers was guaranteed to introduce “administrative chaos” that was “entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the State Election Board) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal and orderly.”
The September 20 rule requires that after the polls close on Election Day, three poll officers must unseal and open each scanner ballot box and remove the paper ballots and sort them into stacks of 50 ballots to make sure the ballots match the figures recorded on the precinct poll pads, ballot marking devices, and scanner recap forms.
The poll officer must then document any inconsistency along with “any corrective measures taken,” though it doesn’t say what those measures should be.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had opposed the rule when it was approved, saying his office wouldn’t have time to issue guidelines or train poll workers to implement the rule, according to Tuesday’s ruling.
The rule also likely exceeded the SEB’s authority and violated Georgia’s administrative procedure laws, the judge concluded.
Nevertheless, the former president’s MAGA allies on the SEB approved the hand count rule 3-2 as part of a wave of new regulations making it harder to count ballots and certify the vote in a crucial battleground state.
Georgia is one of seven states expected to determine the outcome of the election. Almost 415,700 people turned out Tuesday for the first day of early voting, “shattering” earlier voting records, Raffensperger wrote on X.
In the days leading up to the judge’s decision, Raffensperger said the SEB’s hand-count rule would create a “breeding ground for conspiracy theories” if allowed to stand.
The judge in the case apparently agreed, issuing a temporary injunction that blocks the rule while it makes its way through the court system.
“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away,” Judge Robert C.I. McBurney wrote. “Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”