OPINION: MAGA and State Election Board schemes put on ice - for now

It’s like late 2020 all over again, except this time it’s happening before the presidential election.

With Election Day looming, the courts are batting away attempts by MAGAistas to sway the race their way.

Last time, after being declared the loser, former President Donald Trump and his acolytes tried lying, cajoling, suing, threatening and even rioting to undo the election results.

This time, there has been an effort by Georgia’s rogue State Election Board, and from a host of others, to create a framework for Trump to chip away at the electoral system if he loses again.

The efforts, passed in the name of election fairness, could create chaos. And into that chaotic void, MAGA faithful could sweep away the normal democratic electoral safeguards to try to weasel their guy back into office .

In the past week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney , who seemingly is attached to an inordinate number of high-profile cases , slapped down two efforts to open the door for Trump if he doesn’t win.

First, McBurney r ejected a lawsuit by Julie Adams , a Republican Fulton County Election Board member, that sought to allow county election boards across Georgia to refuse to certify election results.

Adams, by the way, voted earlier this year not to certify this year’s presidential primary because she wanted to review reams of election documents and was turned down. But she didn’t get her way; the Fulton board certified the results by a 3-2 vote along party lines.

Credit: Jenni Girtman

“I am a Republican, but all I want is free and fair and transparent elections,” she said earlier this year.

Adams’ lawsuit before McBurney sought to make county certification of elections “discretionary,” rather than mandatory — like many Atlanta drivers treat red lights.

But baked into her team’s arguments was an inventive — and outrageous — theory: That election boards could certify votes from a county overall but exclude certain precincts if they suspected fraud or discrepancies.

McBurney noted this in his decision: “Under plaintiff’s view, (county election) superintendents are empowered ... to ignore or omit from certification those precincts or other collections of votes tainted by whatever error or fraud a superintendent may conclude has occurred.”

Just pause and think about that. Election boards could dream up some pretense and then withhold the votes from unfriendly precincts and keep intact the votes from those they prefer. In a tight race, like what we saw in 2020, that could make a huge difference.

Nah, the judge ruled.

In another lawsuit, McBurney last week paused a State Election Board rule that said county election workers must count the paper ballots at each precinct after the polls close to match them up with the vote totals on the machines.

Sounds rational at first blush, right? The number of paper ballot receipts should match the number of votes recorded on the machines. But elections are messy and paper ballots get folded, lost or spoiled.

The concern here is that election deniers could use small discrepancies in totals to hammer home accusations that the election was rigged and the Dems are again up to no good. They could then loudly demand investigations, the halting of vote counts and certification.

You know, they could go all 2020 again.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

McBurney didn’t get into discussions of the rule’s validity. He said the State Election Board’s idea might even be good policy. But, he added, it’s simply too late in the process to undertake such an effort to train 7,500 workers across the state to count the ballots.

“Administrative chaos,” is what he called it.

Later, in the same courthouse, another Fulton judge, Thomas Cox, invalidated seven new State Election Board rules, including one that allowed election boards to perform a “reasonable inquiry” of elections.

Now, “reasonable inquiry” sounds reasonable . But one must must usually cast a skeptical eye when something is sold as that.

The problem is that “reasonable” is in the eye of the beholder. It is a subjective term and many people believe it will allow election deniers to try to delay, obfuscate and ultimately throw out votes under some pretext. Again, 2020 all over again.

The Republican Party has filed a notice of appeal. It’s unclear when — or if — that would be heard.

The recent lawsuits saw a mixed-up mash that today’s elections create. There were both Democrats and Republicans suing to prevent the State Election Board’s latest offerings from coming into play. A fake Electoral College Elector named Brad Carver was one of the attorneys pushing for the new State Election Board rules.

That five-person election board is controlled by three MAGA-leaning members. At a Georgia rally in August, Trump called them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

The first two attributes are laudable. But the latter? Victory for whom? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

The pit bulls have resisted advice from fellow Republicans like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as well as Attorney General Chris Carr, who I suppose are getting ready to man their battle stations in a few weeks if this election is close in Georgia.

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