Republicans continue to challenge Fulton County elections officials in court as Tuesday’s momentous presidential election looms.
On Saturday a Georgia judge rejected a GOP lawsuit trying to block Fulton and other counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person.
Meanwhile, a Republican county election board member has filed another lawsuit seeking documents she says she needs to certify the results of Tuesday’s election.
The scrutiny underscores the county’s importance in a tight race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. A Democratic stronghold that includes most of the city of Atlanta, Fulton is Georgia’s most populous county.
Fulton and at least five other Georgia counties recently announced that election offices would open over the weekend to allow hand return of absentee ballots.
The lawsuit, filed late Friday, named only Fulton County. It cited a section of Georgia law that says ballot drop boxes cannot be open past the end of advance voting, which ended Friday. But state law also says voters can deliver their absentee ballots in person to county election offices until the close of polls at 7 p.m. on Election Day. Despite that wording, lawyer Alex Kaufman initially claimed in an emergency hearing Saturday that voters aren’t allowed to hand-deliver absentee ballots that were mailed to them….
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer, in an online hearing, repeatedly rejected Kaufman’s arguments before orally ruling against him.
“I find that it is not a violation of those two code sections for a voter to hand-return their absentee ballots,” Farmer said.t
A disagreement also erupted over whether observers could sit inside Fulton election offices as ballots were turned in. County officials initially said no but then reversed that decision.