Georgia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares178 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump escalates insults against Harris as he faces scrutiny over alleged praise of Hitler

      by

      Donald Trump escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris at a Wednesday evening rally in Georgia as he faces growing scrutiny over reports of his praise of Hitler and alleged sexual misconduct.“This woman is crazy,” the former president said at an event in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, hosted by Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group. He said voters should stand up to the vice-president and tell her: “You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put two sentences together. The world is laughing at us because of you.” He also said that in her recent interview with CBS, she “gave an answer that was from a loony bin”, later adding: “She’s not a smart person. She’s a low IQ individual.”The rally, less than two weeks before election day, came after the Guardian published an interview with a former model who accused Trump of groping her at Trump Tower in 1993 after notorious sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein introduced them, an allegation the Trump campaign denied. Stacey Williams said it felt as if the unwanted touching was part of a “twisted game” between the two men and that it appeared Epstein and Trump were “really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together”.

      Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts
      Williams’s account put the spotlight back on the roughly two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct throughout his career. Harris, campaigning with Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has sought to encourage Republican women to support the Democrat.The Georgia rally also came after Harris’s surprise speech in Washington DC on Wednesday, when she denounced the former president as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power”. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and a retired Marine general, told the New York Times this week that he believed Trump met the definition of “fascist” and was “certainly an authoritarian”. He also said Trump repeatedly commented: “Hitler did some good things, too.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a characteristically rambling speech, Trump went on meandering tangents about Google (“Google is treating us much better. Do you notice that? What happened to Google?”); McDonald’s (“McDonald’s was one of the most viewed things that [Google] ever had”); Emmanuel Macron (“I stopped wars with France”); Richard Nixon (“That was not good when they found out he taped every single conversation”); and the vice-president’s name (“You can’t call her ‘Harris’ because nobody knows who the hell you’re talking about”).He threatened to sue CBS’s 60 Minutes, repeating false claims that the station manipulated Harris’s interview after Trump backed out of his planned interview with the program. He reiterated the threat a second time about an hour later in his speech.Robert F Kennedy Jr, former independent presidential candidate, also rallied for Trump in Georgia, calling Kelly a “known liar”. Trump did not address Kelly at the rally, but on Truth Social called his former chief of staff a “LOWLIFE” and “total degenerate”.In a “faith-focused” town hall in Zebulon, Georgia earlier on Wednesday, Trump praised Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister who has been condemned for undermining democratic institutions and aligning with Moscow and Beijing.Asked about his faith, Trump responded: “When you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over people that don’t have that.” He went on to falsely suggest he has endured more investigations than notorious gangster Al Capone. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Giuliani ordered to turn over apartment and Benz to Georgia election workers

      by

      Rudy Giuliani must give control of his New York City apartment, a 1980s Mercedes-Benz once owned by Lauren Bacall, several luxury watches and many other assets to two Georgia election workers he defamed.Lewis Liman, a US district judge in New York, appointed Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss as recipients of the property and gave the former New York mayor and Trump confidante seven days to turn over the assets.A jury ruled that Giuliani owes them around $150m for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election though Giuliani is appealing the ruling. Liman authorized the two women to immediately begin selling the assets.“The road to justice for Ruby and Shaye has been long, but they have never wavered,” said Aaron Nathan, a lawyer representing Freeman and Moss. “Last December, a jury delivered a powerful verdict in their favor, and we’re proud that today’s ruling makes that verdict a reality.”“We are proud that our clients will finally begin to receive some of the compensation to which they are entitled for Giuliani’s actions,” said Nathan. “This outcome should send a powerful message that there is a price to pay for those who choose to intentionally spread disinformation.”A spokesperson for Giuliani did not immediately return a request for comment.In addition to his apartment on the Upper East Side Giuliani was also ordered to turn over several items of Yankees memorabilia and around two dozen watches. The two women are also entitled to fees the Trump campaign owes Giuliani for his legal work in 2020.Giuliani first listed the three-bedroom apartment for $6.5m in 2023, but had cut the price to a little more than $5.1m this fall.Liman did not order Giuliani to turn over a separate Palm Beach condominium, for now, amid an ongoing legal dispute there. Liman instead entered an order barring Giuliani from selling the condo while that dispute is ongoing.After losing the defamation case last fall, Giuliani declared bankruptcy to try and avoid paying Freeman and Moss the money they were owed. A judge dismissed that bankruptcy case earlier this year.After the 2020 election, Giuliani amplified a misleading video and falsely accused Freeman and Moss of illegal activity while counting ballots in Atlanta on election night in 2020. He continued to do so even after Georgia election officials said the video showed both women doing their jobs with no issue. They have also been formally cleared by investigators of any wrongdoing.The video and lie about the two women became central to Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election results in Georgia. The ex-president mentioned Freeman by name on a phone call in 2021 with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, asking her to overturn the vote.Both women have rarely been seen in public since the incident, but have spoken about how it has upended their lives. They received constant death threats, were chased from their homes, and lost their jobs. During the defamation trial in Washington DC, they spoke about the depression they faced after the election.Giuliani, who lost his law license in New York and Washington DC, has shown little regret for his false statements. During the trial, he gave a press conference on the courthouse steps in which he insisted everything he said about Freeman and Moss was true.Freeman and Moss also recently settled a defamation suit with the Gateway Pundit, a far-right news site that was the first to publicly identify them and amplified the video. While the terms of that settlement were confidential, the site has deleted all articles mentioning the two women and posted a notice acknowledging they did not do anything wrong.Freeman and Moss have also settled a lawsuit with One America News Network, another far-right network, which broadcast an apology.All of those cases are being closely watched because they amount to the most significant accountability so far for those who spread lies about the 2020 election. Scholars are closely watching to understand how powerful a tool defamation law can be in curbing misinformation.Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Republican top Georgia elections officer says voting integrity lies hurt his party

      by

      Georgia’s top elections official says he believes Republicans’ claims of doubting the integrity of the vote in November’s presidential election “will really hurt” their party’s chances at the poll.In an interview on Sunday with NewsNation, the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, defended the election process he oversees amid the casting of a record number of early votes in recent days. His comments came after the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Raffensperger’s fellow Republican, posted claims on X that a voting machine had misprinted a voter’s selections to the detriment of her party.Raffensperger, who took office in 2019, said that “spreading stories like that” will “really hurt our turnout on our side”.“I’m a conservative Republican, so I don’t know why they do that, it’s self-defeating,” Raffensperger added. “You know, you can trust the results.”Georgia, a battleground state, has been a central focus for Republicans in their unfounded claims of voter fraud. During the 2020 election, after Joe Biden won Georgia by a close margin and took the presidency from Donald Trump, Raffensperger announced a ballot recount. That recount confirmed that Biden had won the election.Ever since, legal and political showdowns have placed the state as a central focus for Trump’s attempt to return to the White House in a contest against the vice-president, Kamala Harris.Recent court rulings in Georgia have pushed back on Republican-led attempts to change how the state handles its elections.The Georgia state election board, a relatively obscure five-person panel primarily made up of Trump-aligned Republicans, passed a number of rules that would significantly change how the state handles its political races. The most controversial proposal sought to obligate poll workers to hand-count paper ballots on election night.Nonetheless, Georgia judges ruled against implementing those changes after Raffensperger warned they could lead to disrupting the certification of the election, confusion and delays. Georgia’s Republican party has appealed.More than 1 million voters have already cast their ballots in Georgia, cementing its status as a swing state in the race between Harris and Trump.After the 2020 elections, Trump-aligned Republicans lied that their candidate lost to Biden because of voter fraud. Fervor over those lies culminated in Trump supporters’ attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Raffensperger at one point received a phone call directly from Trump pressuring him to “find” him enough votes to prevent Biden from winning Georgia, though the secretary of state rebuffed him.

      Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts
      Georgia state prosecutors later filed criminal charges against Trump over his attempts to overturn the outcome of the presidential election there, all of which are part of the many legal problems that the former president has been confronting while running for the White House again.In an interview with the New York Times earlier in October, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, refused to answer whether the former president lost the 2020 election. Vance later clarified that he did not think Trump lost the 2020 race, saying: “So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use.”Raffensperger on Sunday maintained Georgia was “ranked number one” for election integrity by organizations on both sides of the political spectrum.“That just shows you we’re doing the right thing,” Raffensperger said. “Voters trust the process we have in Georgia. It’s easy to vote. It’s hard to cheat.” More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      A Crack, a Shift, Then Screams: Witnesses Describe Georgia Dock Collapse That Killed 7

      by

      Investigators have begun looking for reasons behind the failure at a ferry dock on Sapelo Island, the site of a festival celebrating the heritage of descendants of enslaved people. They had come to Sapelo Island, just off the curve of the Georgia coast, for a celebration of resilience, of a people, of a culture that for generations had been so fragile but could not be broken.The smell of smoked mullet drifted. Vendors sold red peas and rice. Performers onstage presented poetry and sang African spirituals.By midafternoon on Saturday, dozens readied for the trip back to the mainland, a route beginning with a ferry known as the Annemarie waiting at the end of the floating dock in the marsh. But then, a strange cracking noise. The walkway to the dock suddenly shifted. Then it collapsed.“Everyone’s falling into the water, and you’re hearing screams,” said Michael Wood, 43, who had been waiting in line to board.On Sunday, members of the tight-knit Gullah Geechee community, descendants of formerly enslaved people in the Southeast, who had gathered for a festival celebrating their heritage, mourned four women and three men, all of them older than 70, who were killed. And officials began investigating how a short journey to the only way off the Georgia island could have led to such tragedy.“The initial findings of our investigation at this point showed a catastrophic failure of the gangway, causing it to collapse,” said Walter Rabon, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, adding that investigators and engineers will be gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses. Three people were also injured and remain hospitalized in critical condition. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris marks birthday with church visit after Trump’s crude rhetoric at rally

      by

      Democratic governors from three states in the so-called blue wall that is key to their party’s aspirations for an electoral college victory delivered closing pitches for Kamala Harris on Sunday as their presidential nominee celebrated her 60th birthday with a visit to church.Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer barnstormed the Sunday morning political shows to talk up the vice-president’s policy agenda – and highlight differences with Republican candidate Donald Trump, 16 days before an election that polls suggest is still on a knife edge.Acolytes of Trump, meanwhile, attempted to defend the former president’s extraordinary and vulgar rhetoric during a Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania, when he called Harris a “shit vice-president” and exalted the size of the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis.“I don’t want to go back to Donald Trump when he was in charge of the country,” Shapiro told NBC’s Meet the Press.“Remember the record? I know there’s still some people that have maybe a little brain fog, they don’t remember what it was like under Donald Trump. You had more chaos, you had less jobs, and you had a whole lot less freedom.“I don’t think we want to go back to a time of chaos. I want a stable, strong leader, and that’s Kamala Harris.”It also emerged Sunday that Harris has no plans to campaign with Joe Biden before election day on 5 November, a development appearing to confirm recent reports of friction between the two after the 81-year-old president was pressured out of running for re-election over age-related questions.“The most important role he can play is doing his job as president,” an anonymous White House official told NBC News, which said the decision was mutual following discussions between the campaign and Biden administration officials.Shapiro joined Evers and Whitmer, his fellow passengers on a weekend blue wall bus tour, for a joint interview on ABC’s This Week, in which the three spoke of polls showing the presidential race virtually deadlocked in all three states.“Both candidates believe that Pennsylvania is critical – I just think we’ve got a better candidate, a better message, and what we’re experiencing is a whole lot more energy,” Shapiro said.In Michigan, according to Whitmer, voters were comparing both candidates’ records ahead of the 5 November election.“While this is going to be close, I’d much rather be playing our hand in theirs,” she said. “We got a better candidate. We’ve got receipts on the issues that matter to the American people, on the economy, individual rights, affordable housing, and we got a better ground game.”Evers, a two-term governor, pushed back on Trump’s claims that a Harris administration would tank the US economy, using Democratic policies in Wisconsin as an example.“We have the best economy we’ve ever had, the largest budget we’ve ever had, and we’re in good shape, and people are making more money than they ever made. So we’re in a good place, and it had nothing to do with Donald Trump,” he said.The swing state governors were speaking as Harris rallied Black voters in another swing state, Georgia, on Sunday with “souls to the polls” visits to two community churches.“What kind of country do we want to live in – a country of chaos, fear and hate, or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?” she told the congregation of the New Birth Missionary Baptist church in Atlanta.“The great thing about living in a democracy is that we, the people, have the power to answer that question. So let us answer not just through our words, but through our actions and with our votes.”Harris has been attempting to shore up support from the Black community, particularly Black men. Polls have warned of a lack of enthusiasm for her campaign, though newer polling from the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion found Harris had built a lead among Black voters in swing states.Singer Stevie Wonder was scheduled to join her later at a rally at the Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro. That gathering was set to occur ahead of Harris’s interview with civil rights leader Al Sharpton to be broadcast later Sunday on MSNBC.“We just have to keep doing the work,” Georgia US senator Raphael Warnock – a Black Democrat – said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “And the good news is – that’s exactly what Kamala Harris [is] … doing.”Trump remained in Pennsylvania for an afternoon rally in Lancaster and a photo-op at a McDonald’s restaurant, the day after his bizarre appearance in Latrobe, Palmer’s home town, in which he riffed at length – in an unrefined address – about how well endowed the golfer was with respect to his genitalia.Republicans appearing on the Sunday talk shows attempted to detract from Trump’s comments and other recent behavior, including suggesting in an interview this week he would use the US military against political enemies.View image in fullscreenThe South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham lost his composure when questioned about it on NBC’s Meet the Press – and tried to pivot to two recent assassination attempts on Trump, both conducted by pro-Republican persons.“When you talk about rhetoric, you gotta remember they tried to blow his head off,” Graham said. “He’s been shot at and hit in the ear, and we’re lucky they didn’t blow his head off. And another guy tried to kill him … so I’m not overly impressed about the rhetoric game here.”Graham also condemned Republican colleagues, including former members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, as well as numerous ex-Trump administration officials who have denounced him and expressed support for Harris.The retired general Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, called Trump “fascist to the core”, according to veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book War.“To every Republican voting for her, what the hell are you doing?” Graham said. “You’re supporting the most radical nominee in the history of American politics. When you support her, you’re supporting four more years of garbage policy.”US House speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was more restrained – but equally as determined to avoid questions about Trump’s commentary in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, suggesting that it was host Jake Tapper who was obsessed with talking about Palmer’s penis.“The media can pick it apart, but people are going to vote what’s best for their family and they see that in Trump,” he said.Early in-person voting is under way in numerous states, with voters in Georgia setting a first-day turnout record Tuesday, even as polls have the candidates in a virtual dead heat.Shapiro said winning over the remaining undecided voters would determine the winner.“There are people that, frankly, don’t follow this on a daily basis, people that don’t follow the polls. They go to work, they got kids at home, they do their job with their kids and get up the next day,” he said.“The polls look at a small number. I know it’s a science, but at the end of the day I run into people all the time who just haven’t given it a thought, so we’re going to help them.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      At Least 7 Dead After Ferry Dock Collapses on Sapelo Island, Georgia

      by

      The circumstances of the accident in Sapelo Island, south of Savannah, were not immediately clear.At least seven people were killed on Saturday when the gangway of a ferry dock collapsed on an island in Georgia, forcing at least 20 people into the water, the authorities said.The deaths on Sapelo Island were confirmed by Mark Deverger, the volunteer fire chief for McIntosh County. He said he did not know the specifics of what had happened. The island is about 70 miles by road south of Savannah, Ga.The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which manages the island and operates the ferry service, said in a statement that at least 20 people went into the water when the gangway collapsed.A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guardin Savannah said that he could not confirm how many people had been injured or killed in the accident.The McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that it was “working an active situation on Sapelo Island,” and that multiple agencies were responding. A fire department in nearby Glynn County said that emergency crews had responded around 4:30 p.m.J.R. Grovner, who owns Sapelo Island Tours, a company that uses the dock, was on the scene shortly after the gangway collapsed. As he arrived at the dock, he said, he saw bodies floating in the Duplin River.“Most of the bodies were already on the edge of the river, and people were pulling them up,” Mr. Grovner said by phone on Saturday night, adding that several of the victims appeared to be elderly. He said he had helped to check some of their pulses as people at the scene administered C.P.R.“I’ve been on Sapelo for 44 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Mr. Grovner said. A majority of the people visiting the island on Saturday were attending an annual Cultural Day festival, Mr. Grovner said.The festival is organized by the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, a nonprofit that helps to preserve the heritage of the Gullah Geechee people who live along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and northern Florida. The Gullah Geechee are descendants of enslaved West African people who were brought to the southeastern United States more than two centuries ago.The society could not immediately be reached for comment late Saturday.This is a developing story. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris stresses abortion rights and early voting in packed Atlanta rally

      by

      Kamala Harris highlighted the threat to women’s reproductive rights and Donald Trump’s apparent exhaustion at a rally Saturday in south Atlanta, continuing a full-court press for votes in Georgia as early voting breaks records here.The race continues to appear close in Georgia, with polls suggesting the Republican nominee holds a one-point lead in the state. Trump has made multiple appearances in Georgia and has a rally with Turning Point Action planned in Gwinnett county, outside Atlanta, next week.However, the National Rifle Association canceled a planned Saturday rally with Trump in Savannah, citing a “scheduling conflict”. Trump has also canceled several news interviews over the last week.The Trump campaign has angrily pushed back against a suggestion raised by a staffer that Trump had been exhausted by the appearances. But Harris has seized the idea as a rallying cry.“And now, he’s ducking debates, and canceling interviews because of exhaustion,” Harris said. “And when he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed that he tends to go off script and ramble, and generally for the life of him can’t finish a thought? … Folks are exhausted with someone trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other. We’re exhausted. That’s why I say it’s time to turn the page on that.”View image in fullscreenHarris returned to familiar themes on a day of perfect Atlanta weather, describing the “opportunity economy” as one that brings down the cost of living for prescription medication, groceries and housing through anti-price-gouging initiatives, while providing financial support for new parents and entrepreneurs.Extending Medicare coverage for home healthcare services would prevent working adults from having to quit a productive job or spend down savings to take care of aging parents. “It’s about dignity,” she said in the city’s Lakewood Amphitheater.Harris will attend services Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a majority-Black megachurch in the heart of Atlanta’s Black suburbs in south DeKalb county. New Birth and other large Black churches in Georgia traditionally organize a “souls to the polls” push on Sunday early voting days.As of 5pm Saturday, about 1.3 million Georgians had cast ballots early in person, more than double the 2020 pace on the fifth day of early voting in Georgia. In 2020, about 2.7 million out of 5 million voters cast ballots early in person, with more than two-thirds of votes cast before election day. Absentee ballots are down sharply, however, a reflection of the end of the pandemic and changes to absentee ballot rules.Early voting provides real-time feedback for campaign strategists hoping to target voters who have not yet cast a ballot. Democrats pressed their supporters in Georgia to vote early in 2020 and 2022, a strategy that helped lead the party to victory in the 2020 presidential race and Georgia’s two vital wins in the US Senate.“Georgia, out of nowhere, we made a way,” said the US Senator Jon Ossoff. “This is an election that will determine the character of our republic. This is much deeper than Democrats versus Republicans. Former president Trump is unfit for the presidency.”But so far this year, early voting in rural and ex-urban areas of Georgia, rich in Republican votes, have outpaced core Atlanta turnout rates. Donald Trump has pointedly encouraged his supporters to vote early this year, a tacit acknowledgement of the strategic error of 2020.Early voting also began on Saturday in Nevada, where Barack Obama campaigned for Harris in Las Vegas. The former president also poked fun at Trump, telling the audience “we don’t need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump with no guard rails looks like.”In Georgia, early voters among Democrats have been vocal about abortion policy driving their votes. The deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women who couldn’t access timely maternal health service or legal abortions, have resonated in the rhetoric of the election.“Let us agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: the government should not be telling her what to do,” Harris said. The rally rolled clips of Thurman’s family describing their grief, and then of Trump mocking their loss in a town hall interview hosted by Fox News.“He belittles their sorrow, making it about himself and his television ratings,” Harris said. “It’s cruel.”But the Lakewood rally was plainly about driving turnout and enthusiasm among Black voters. Usher, an iconic Atlanta-based R&B musician and dancer, spoke early to the crowd, calling on people to vote early for Harris, and to reach out to friends and family.“How we vote – I mean, everything that we do in the next 17 days – will affect our children, our grandchildren, of the people we love the most,” Usher said.Ryan Wilson, the co-founder of private networking hub the Gathering Spot and a notable Atlanta entrepreneur, discussed the Harris proposal to offer up to $50,000 in grants to Black entrepreneurs. “That would have been a game changer for me,” he said. “Vice-President Harris’s opportunity agenda for Black men who provide folks like me the tools to achieve generational wealth, lower costs and protect their rights. And what would Donald Trump do? I think it’s fair to say: nothing.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Two rulings restore calm to Georgia elections rules – for now

      by

      Two court rulings in Georgia over the last week have beaten back efforts by Republican activists to empower political challenges to November’s election results, though the expected legal fight over the election is far from concluded.Robert McBurney, a Fulton county superior court judge, ruled on Tuesday that elections officials had a legal obligation to certify an election, leaving disputes over results and allegations of misconduct to investigation by local district attorneys’ offices. The ruling rejected the assertion of Trump-aligned attorneys working with Julie Adams, a Republican appointee to the Fulton election board, that board members could exercise their discretion in certification.A day later, another Fulton county superior court judge, Thomas Cox, issued a stern order after a short hearing, invalidating seven rules made by Georgia’s state election board this year. One of the invalidated rules required ballots to be hand-counted on election night. A second allowed elections officials to conduct a poorly defined “reasonable inquiry” into discrepancies before issuing a certification. And a third would have required elections officials to turn over volumes of documents to board members for review before certification.The rules, passed by a three-person bloc of Trump-aligned members on the five-person board, were “unsupported by Georgia’s Election Code and are in fact contrary to the Election Code”, according to the ruling, which added that the state election board lacked the authority to create rules that go beyond state law. The ruling sharply limits the power of the state election board to make further rules.The Georgia Republican party said it would appeal the ruling, while voting rights groups hailed the victory.“Striking down the state election board’s hand-count and other rules is a major win for voters, election integrity and democracy as a whole,” Nichola Hines, president of the League of Women Voters of Georgia, a plaintiff in the suit challenging the state election board, said in a statement. “These rules were introduced with bad intentions and aimed at causing chaos in Georgia’s secure elections process. The League remains committed to standing up for Georgia voters every step of the way.”

      Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts
      The state election board’s rule-making put it at odds with many county elections directors, voting rights advocates and the attorney general’s office, which advised the board that the rules it was considering would probably be found unconstitutional.Janelle King, one of the three board members Trump praised as being “pit bulls for honesty, transparency and victory” at an Atlanta rally earlier this year, defended the board’s actions in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on its Politically Georgia podcast on Thursday.“I feel like the benefit in all of this is that, I hope people see that has never been and isn’t a partisan issue,” she said. “A Republican brought this case against us,” she added, referring to Scot Turner, a retired Georgia state representative who was a plaintiff suing the board.With regard to the hand-counting of ballots, King said that the board’s rule-making was meant to ensure an accurate vote count.“This is not saying anything sinister is going on,” King said. “We keep talking about human error. If we know there’s going to be human error, then it’s important for us to create rules that are surrounded by laws that allow us to plug that hole. That’s what I thought I was doing and what I will continue to do.”Voting rights organizations disagree with her characterization of the board’s rule-making.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The 11th-hour rules adopted by the state election board only serve to cause disruption to the electoral process and confusion for voters,” Campaign Legal Center’s voting advocacy and partnerships director, Jonathan Diaz, said. “We are glad one state court has agreed that the hand-count rule cannot go into effect for the upcoming election and we encourage other courts to follow suit.”The board itself is under fire by Democratic lawmakers, who see its members as partisan in ways that may violate the law. A suit by the Georgia state senator Nabilah Islam-Parkes, former Fulton elections board chair Cathy Woolard and state senator-elect Randall Mangham sought to force Governor Brian Kemp to investigate the board for conflicts of interest and potentially remove some of its members.Judge Ural Glanville dismissed the suit earlier this month, ruling that the Democrats could not simply label their accusations “formal charges” and compel the governor to act.The three have appealed the ruling, Mangham said.“Look, these people clearly have conflicts of interest and ethical violations and are intentionally violating the law,” Mangham said. He referred to comments by one state board member, Rick Jeffares, who suggested his interest in becoming a regional Environmental Protection Agency director to a former Trump campaign aide. “This atmosphere is coming from a rogue elections board. Just a few rogue people. These people who are lining up for a job in the new administration … It’s like an umpire is lobbying for a job on the team and can then go and call a play fairly. And then you don’t want to investigate it?”The last-minute rule changes struck down by Georgia judges would never have happened under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the US supreme court, Mangham said. “The preclearance requirement would keep all of this from coming.” More