ATLANTA—Georgian voters opened this fall’s election in the key swing state with exactly what Trumpite Republicans there feared and tried unsuccessfully to nullify: A record turnout of more than 328,000 voters in person or by mailed-in ballots on October 15. The prior first-day record, set four years ago, was 136,000.
Anticipating such crowds at the polls, the Trumpites who run the state legislature and a Trumpite on the Fulton County (Atlanta) elections board tried to ensure the state would go for Trump by taking the decision out of the voters’ hands.
The same Fulton County Superior Court Judge, Robert C.I. McBurney, turned the Republican plots down, twice, on October 14. And his rulings apply to the whole key swing state.
Though no partisan totals were provided, Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign cheered. The party generally takes such early turnouts as a good omen.
First, that morning, the judge tossed a lawsuit by Trumpite Fulton County elections board member Julie Adams, arguing “superintendents” of elections—the county election boards—had the right and duty to delay certifying election results if there were even allegations of fraud, a common Trumpite tactic.
Delaying certification beyond the deadline of the Monday after the election nullifies that county’s votes—the GOP aim in heavily Democratic Atlanta.
And in his second decision, in late afternoon, Judge McBurney tossed a hastily approved move by the Trumpite-dominated state elections board mandating counting every ballot in Georgia by hand, just like what Trumpites forced four years ago when a record five million votes were cast.
Mandating that hand count so close to Election Day is “too much, too late,” the judge wrote.
“The administrative chaos that will—not may—ensue is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the State Elections Board) to ensure that our elections are fair legal, and orderly,” he wrote.
“From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it,” the state and national Democrats, and Harris’s campaign, who sued to stop the hand-count rule, cheered.
In his 11-page ruling against Trumpite elections board member Adams, Judge McBurney said her scheme, one of the myriad ways state and local Trumpites around the country are trying to skew the election in advance for their god, violates the Georgia Constitution and state election laws.
“If election superintendents were, as plaintiff [Adams] 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,” wrote McBurney. He applied his decision to the whole state.
Fulton County, dominated by Atlanta, is the political heavyweight in the Peach State, which became a swing state in the 2020 presidential election, and in two U.S. Senate runoffs two months afterwards, via heavy Unite HERE canvassing. It’s a swing state again, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris narrowly trailing Trump, the former Republican president and present convicted felon, in opinion polls.
But if just one Georgia county elections board fails to certify its ballots to the governor, who faces a deadline to send Georgia’s electoral votes to D.C., the state is tossed out of the balloting.
Wanted to guarantee Trump victory
Adams wanted to ensure Trump would win, no matter what. The 2020 fight over Georgia’s 16 electoral votes produced a memorably testy hour-long post-election phone call from Trump to its top elections official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative but old-style Republican.
Trump ordered Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 more popular votes, so he could win the state by one ballot and claim Georgia. In other words, commit fraud. Raffensperger bluntly refused. Trump then threatened to prosecute him. Raffensperger stood fast.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won this state, and flipping the state is a great testament to the country,” Trump said. “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible.” Raffensperger refused to manufacture votes.
State Trumpite Republicans viewed the “refusal to certify” possibility, and the hand counts, as end runs around Raffensperger. They tried to beat him in the party primary two years ago and lost.
Adams argued that in her and the board’s capacity as election superintendents, they had the right and duty not only to investigate suspected vote fraud but to refuse to certify the election results until the probe was done.
That right and duty, Adams said, applied not just to Fulton County, but to every county in the state. The Republican-dominated state legislature enacted it after Democrat Joe Biden narrowly beat Trump in the Peach State four years ago.
Nothing doing, Judge McBurney said. The board’s sole role, he stated, is mandatory: It must certify the returns, and if there are errors or suspected fraud, there can be court challenges afterwards. And that, too, applies to the whole state, the judge added.
The local boards, acting as superintendents, can’t overturn the actual tallies, the judge explained. The state Supreme Court decided in 1947 that the county election boards’ “election certification is a purely ministerial task that gives its performer no discretion to exclude some votes while counting others.”
The Brennan Center for Law and Justice reports Georgia is not alone among Trumpite-run states in trying to tangle up—and throw out—certifications, which occur only after checking, double-checking, and triple-checking at the polls.
“Since 2020, in their frenzy to undo the voters’ will, election deniers have tried to upend that [certification] process,” the Brennan Center said. That year, “Trump lobbied” Wayne County, Mich., “board members to get them to reject the votes of their own constituents,” even calling them down to the White House. Detroit is the dominant, and heavily Democratic city in Wayne County. Like Atlanta, its majority of voters are people of color.
Wayne County elections board members refused Trump’s lobbying, voting 3-1 to certify the results, as one Republican joined both Democrats. The Trumpite-dominated state GOP then fired the Republican.
“In 2022, officials in Cochise County, Ariz., broke from tradition and voted against certifying the election results based on some vague worries about voting machines. A judge eventually ordered them to certify, putting an end to their little rebellion,” the center said.
“Refusing to certify is an act of partisan petulance—the last tantrum of sore losers–not the heroic stand of a conscientious objector,” the Brennan Center concluded.
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