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.
The things they “can’t” do and the things they won’t do aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Though, they should be.
I think this opens a path to prompt judicial override if they refuse to certify.
Which would probably go poorly for us, see: Bush v Gore. A bunch of the lawyers from that case are now on the Supreme Court.
Good ruling and all, but I won’t keep my hopes up until I know SCOTUS hasn’t/can’t change it. I don’t for one second put it past them to say “actuallllllly they can if the results are bad for Trump.” but in more legal bullshit language.
It’s a state elections law, Supreme Court of Georgia is the ultimate authority on what it says. States have a lot of leeway to determine their own election laws, so it’s hard to mount a federal law challenge to them in the first place. The RNC voter suppression consent decree was a rare exception.
IANAL, but it’s hard to imagine an opposition to this where federal courts even have jurisdiction, much less a path to SCOTUS.
Thanks for the clarification! That’s definitely a bit of a relief.