Georgia Supreme Court Ruling Underscores Anti-Democratic Motivations of Trump-Aligned State Election Board

The Georgia Supreme Court permanently rescinded four rules the State Election Board (SEB) had forced through in the weeks before last year’s general election, including a rule that would have allowed local boards to delay certification of election results and another that would have required hand counts of ballots — measures pushed by those seeking to fan the flames of election distrust.

The ruling, in which the court found that the board had overstepped its rulemaking authority and infringed on legislators’ lawmaking power, is a significant check on the power of the three members of the SEB’s far-right majority. Those three members not only advanced rules last summer that were aligned with then-candidate Donald Trump’s and the election denial movement’s partisan goals; they also sought to shirk transparency rules and keep their actions hidden from the public, including in lawsuits brought by American Oversight. 

Last year, American Oversight began investigating efforts by the SEB and its Trump-aligned members — whom Trump praised as “pit bulls” fighting for “victory” during the 2024 campaign — to undermine the state’s election processes and dodge accountability. After those members held an illegal meeting last July to advance several rules — including measures that would have allowed local election officials to conduct “reasonable inquiry” prior to certifying election results — we sued for violations of the state’s Open Meetings Act, leading the SEB to  withdraw the rules before reintroducing and approving them during a legal meeting. 

A state judge struck down the rules before the election, but the SEB, the Republican National Committee (RNC), and the Georgia Republican Party appealed that decision, moving the case before the state Supreme Court and leading to last week’s ruling. The state and national Republican Party’s intervention in the case was yet another indication of the partisan motivations behind those rules, with the state party having provided the rules to the SEB in advance. 

The state party also intervened in American Oversight’s open meetings lawsuit, despite the suit not having been about election law. “The Georgia Republican Party’s intervention in and efforts to dismiss our lawsuit are thinly veiled attempts to shield three rogue members of the State Election Board from accountability so they are free to act for the benefit of the party’s preferred candidates,” American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said at the time.

The SEB’s secretive and last-minute efforts to change election rules were a clear partisan power grab aimed at bolstering Trump’s lies about election fraud ahead of the 2024 vote. The SEB’s now-overturned rules would have introduced new identification requirements for some absentee voters, given local election boards power to refuse to certify results based on their own discretion, and mandated that poll workers hand count all ballots. 

As American Oversight’s 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook laid out, such rules were key tactics in the election denial movement’s effort to lay the groundwork for post-election chaos and mistrust should their preferred candidates not win, opening the door for partisan interference, certification delays, and partisan legal challenges. 

This spring, American Oversight had secured another significant legal victory, when a Georgia court denied far-right board member Janice Johnston’s motion to dismiss our lawsuit alleging the SEB and its members had systematically obstructed public records laws by using private email accounts for official correspondence and refusing to adequately search for or produce required documents. 

Georgia, which Trump lost in 2020, had been a particular target of the election denial movement. After that election, the state adopted multiple laws that made it easier for activists to challenge other voters’ registrations, disproportionately impacting Black voters in the state. And while 2025 may not be an election year in Georgia, election administration rules advanced or rescinded during off-years can still have a major impact on voting rights down the line. Read more about our recent work in the state here.