Abhiraman v. State Election Board (Amicus)

Georgia requires elections administrators to receive election returns from poll workers, count votes, and certify the totals to the Secretary of State. Certification is not a choice but a ministerial duty. Administrators are authorized to perform routine verification procedures before certifying the returns, but they can’t launch their own investigations into the election’s integrity or unilaterally decline to certify the results.

Georgia law is clear, but an alarming number of county elections officials have refused to perform their certification duties without any actual reason to doubt returns. This year, a board member petitioned the Election Board to change a routine accounting function into a discretionary political act. Despite public opposition, the State Election Board passed rules that would require administrators to conduct their own inquiries into the election and examine all election documentation before certifying the results.

These rules invite rogue officials to obstruct and delay certification if they disagree with the choices made by voters. The rules also add confusing and untested new reconciliation requirements that do not exist under Georgia law and could allow county boards to discount ballots simply by claiming fraud. All of these changes threaten to disenfranchise voters.

A group of Georgia county election board members, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued the State Election Board in Georgia Superior Court, seeking a declaration that the new rules are procedurally deficient and must be construed narrowly to avoid a conflict with Georgia’s mandatory certification requirements.

The ACLU, ACLU of Georgia, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed an amicus brief on behalf of five Georgia voters and the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP. Our amicus brief centers the concerns of Georgia voters who stand to be disenfranchised if local officials are permitted to disrupt certification. Our brief makes clear that election certification is a voting rights issue, and obstructing certification is nothing less than voter disenfranchisement.

The case is pending.