'Too much, too late': Georgia's hand-count ballot rule blocked amid 'fraught' election

A Fulton County judge temporarily blocked a Georgia State Election board rule that required poll workers to count — by hand — ballots on Election night, declaring the rule, "too much, too late."

The ruling was handed down by Judge Robert McBurney on Tuesday night, who blocked enforcement of the rules, which were passed by a Trump-backed panel and set to take effect on Oct. 22 — seven days after early voting starts and fourteen days before the general election.

Democrats asked for an emergency temporary restraining order to prevent the hand-count rule from taking effect and being enforced.

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MSNBC legal expert Lisa Rubin noted in a thread on X that for the judge, the "timing was crucial."

"He acknowledges that a hand count of ballots could be 'consistent with the SEB’s mission of ensuring fair, legal, and orderly elections,'" Rubin said. "But when the rule is scheduled to be implemented a mere fortnight before the election? That’s a recipe for chaos, McBurney holds, especially where, as here, the 'eleventh and one half hour' implementation put county election boards in the position of having to put the rule into practice without guidelines or training from the GA Secretary of State."

Rubin noted that the judge called out that implementing the rule would involve "'thousands of poll workers handling, sorting, and counting actual ballots in a manner unknown and untested in the era of ballot scanning devices.'" Additionally, the judge said the 2024 election is "fraught" — haunted by the "memories of January 6," which he said have not faded away.

"Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public," the judge said, according to Rubin.