In September, the state election commission decided with a narrow majority of pro-Republican votes that the ballot papers for the presidential election on November 5th must also be counted by hand in addition to the machine process. According to critics, such a procedure would significantly prolong the counting process and thus delay the announcement of the results.
In the already heated political mood in the USA, delays could create space for disinformation. Counting by hand is also prone to errors and could sow doubts about the accuracy of the results.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump narrowly lost to current incumbent Joe Biden in the 2020 election in Georgia. He then asked the state’s election director to “find” the ballot papers needed for his victory. Trump has now been indicted in Georgia for his attempted election interference.
In another ruling, Judge McBurney ordered local election commission chairmen to certify all results. A Republican election commission member from Fulton County, around the capital Atlanta, had previously asked the court for a ruling that the district committee chairmen should have the discretion to certify election results or not.
The judge rejected this request. If election commission chairmen were given the right to “simultaneously play investigator, prosecutor, jury and judge based on one-sided assumptions of voter fraud or error and to refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be deprived of their vote,” McBurney ruled.
Georgia is one of seven US states that are likely to play a decisive role in the presidential election in three weeks. The peculiarities of the US electoral system mean that the decision about the future president is made in only a handful of states, the so-called swing states.
Meanwhile, early voting for the presidential election began in Georgia on Tuesday. A spokesman for the Interior Department in Atlanta reported record participation. On the first day, more than 328,000 citizens had already voted, he explained on the online service
The polls predict an extremely close result in the presidential election, in which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are competing against each other. At the same time, the election is seen as a directional decision for the future of US democracy.
