Reuters
Georgia local officials have duty to certify election, state judge rules
(Reuters) -A Georgia judge has ruled that local election officials must certify results, in a win for Democrats concerned that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s allies may seek to sow chaos by delaying vote counts after the Nov. 5 election. In an Oct. 14 ruling, Judge Robert McBurney in Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta denied a request from a Republican member of the county’s election board to declare that she had discretion to decline to certify the results if there were concerns about the process. “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so – because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud – refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” McBurney wrote.