Georgia judge says county election officials cannot delay or decline certification of election results

(CNN) — County election officials in Georgia cannot delay or decline to certify election results, a state judge ruled Monday, dealing a blow to an effort by conservatives in the critical battleground state to gain the legal right to reject results based on a suspicion of fraud or abuse.

“Election superintendents in Georgia have a mandatory fixed obligation to certify election results,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in an 11-page ruling. “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.”

The case is one of the closely watched disputes over election certification in the critical battleground state. A ruling is still pending in a separate case brought by state and national Democrats against a rule from the State Election Board that requires local election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before certifying them.

McBurney said in his ruling that while local superintendents have an obligation to “investigate concerns about miscounts,” such concern “is not cause to delay or decline certification.”

The case was brought by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, who had asked the judge to declare that her duties in certifying election results “are discretionary not ministerial.”

“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.”

County election officials face a statutory deadline to certify the election results by November 12 this year.

Fulton County has had legitimate problems running its elections and earlier this year the State Election Board reprimanded the county and ordered an independent election monitor because of issues that arose around the 2020 presidential election, including an incident where a batch of ballots were double-scanned during one of the 2020 recounts.

But the extensive reviews of Georgia’s 2020 election – which included two machine vote counts and one hand count— did not reveal evidence of widespread fraud. Evidence has not emerged showing tally sheets were tampered with or drop box ballots were improperly taken by couriers, in 2020 or in subsequent elections.

The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia, both of which had intervened in the case – with the backing of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign – to oppose Adams’ arguments, celebrated the ruling Tuesday as a major legal win.

“Election after election, in state after state, we have protected our elections from far-right Republicans trying to disrupt them, and Democrats remain ready to stand up and make sure every voter can cast their ballot knowing it will count. The experts were clear that the 2020 election was free, fair, and secure, and Democrats are making sure that the 2024 is the same,” the groups said in a joint statement.

An attorney for Adams has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.

In his ruling, McBurney handed Adams a small victory by saying that she had a right to request and receive access to “election information” ahead of certifying the results. But, the judge wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

McBurney also stressed that concerns over potential election fraud or abuse can be raised by superintendents or others through post-certification court challenges known as “election contests.”

“Importantly, election contests occur in open court, under the watchful eye of a judge and the public,” he wrote. “The claims of fraud from one side are tested by the opposing side in that open court – rather than being silently ‘adjudicated’ by a superintendent outside the public space, resulting in votes being excluded from the final count without due process being afforded those electors.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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