County election officials across Georgia cannot refuse to certify the results of the
Judge Robert McBurney rebuffed a case brought by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections who sought a court order declaring that she has discretion to decide what to do after
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Adams' case is one of multiple lawsuits in the battleground state challenging how the November match-up between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will play out. Adams' lawsuit is widely seen as an early test of the potential for state and local officials who support Trump to use their authority to undermine the vote counting process if it appears he's lost again.
McBurney said that the duty of election officials to certify the outcome is "ministerial" and that they can't refuse to perform that duty "under any circumstance."
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"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."
A lawyer for Adams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
