The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173399   Message #4209883
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
15-Oct-24 - 01:11 PM
Thread Name: BS: American Presidential race 2024
Subject: RE: BS: American Presidential race 2024
This is at the County level in Georgia, but it addresses the attempt of Trump supporters to suggest that election workers can refuse to certify election results. No, they can't do that.

Local Officials Cannot Refuse to Certify Election Results, Georgia Judge Rules
The ruling cuts at the heart of a key argument made by right-wing activists since the 2020 election, when Donald Trump sought to disrupt the certification process as part of his bid to subvert the results.

But Judge Robert C.I. McBurney ruled on Monday evening that the effort to wrest control of certification was unconstitutional and against state law, and that law enforcement and the courts remained the proper venue for any investigations, challenges or concerns about the integrity of an election.

“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,” Judge McBurney wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.” . . . .“Superintendents (and the staff to whom they may delegate some of these responsibilities) are rule-writers, personnel trainers and managers, logisticians, marketers, and accountants. Much of what they do is left to their broad, reasoned discretion,” he wrote. “But not everything — some things an election superintendent must do, either in a certain way or by a certain time, with no discretion to do otherwise. Certification is one of those things.”
Of course there are a dozen courts stacked up above the County judge in Georgia, so be prepared to see the Trump folks trot out the Rolodex of judges and courts to start the appeals process. They have three weeks in which to waste their money.