In Dean v. Georgia, the state Supreme Court rejected a (bold) claim by a losing candidate in the Georgia Labor Commissioner primary that all other candidates in both Democratic and Republican primaries lacked the proper qualifications.

The dismissal was based on laches: the notion that undue delay in asserting alleged rights precludes relief. Dean waited until after he lost to challenge the qualifications of the other candidates.

The most important paragraph:

Due to prudential considerations grounded in Georgia’s Election Code, “litigants in election contests have a duty to expedite resolution of the dispute before an election is held, and the failure to make every effort to dispose of election disputes with dispatch before a subsequent election may result in the dismissal of the case.” Peterson v. Vie, 320 Ga. 502, 504 (910 SE2d 191) (2024) (citation and punctuation omitted). As we have recently explained, “parties wanting a court to throw out the results of an election after it has occurred must clear significant hurdles,” and our precedent has, for decades, made it “crystal clear that the first such hurdle is for the parties seeking to undo an election to have done everything within their power to have their claims decided before the election occurred.” Ponder v. Davis, 320 Ga. 532, 535 (910 SE2d 195) (2024) (citation and punctuation omitted).