A Georgia state judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a controversial rule supported by allies of former President Donald Trump that election administrators feared would cause last-minute chaos in the election.
Judge Robert McBurney granted a request from election officials in Cobb County and others to pause a rule that would require poll workers to hand-count the number of ballots soon after polls close. McBurney noted in his order that the rule was being instituted so close to Election Day that poll workers couldn’t be trained for it.
“Should the Hand Count Rule take effect as scheduled, it would do so on the very fortnight of the election,” he wrote. “As of today, there are no guidelines or training tools for the implementation of the Hand Count Rule.”
His order, which followed lengthy hearings in his courtroom, only temporarily stays the decision; it could be appealed to a higher court in the state for this year or eventually go into effect in future elections.
Late last month, Trump-aligned members of the Georgia State Election Board pushed through the controversial policy requiring hand-counting of ballots. Local poll workers would not be tallying results but counting the raw number of ballots cast and comparing them to the machine-counted total.