In Major Blow to Trump’s Election Denial Efforts, Georgia Judge Says Results Must Be Certified

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney looks through paperwork, Aug. 14, 2023, in Atlanta. (Brynn Anderson, AP)

A Georgia judge ruled on Tuesday that county election boards are required to certify election results—a major victory for democratic norms and a big loss for election deniers seeking to subvert the 2024 election.

“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance,” Fulton County Judge Judge Robert McBurney wrote in a response to a lawsuit filed by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections who voted against certifying the May presidential primary. Adams works for an election denial group founded by conservative activist Cleta Mitchell, a Trump lawyer who helped spearhead the effort to overturn the 2020 results and filed her lawsuit with the support of the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute.

McBurney’s opinion is especially significant because the MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board has passed a series of controversial eleventh-hour rule changes that Democrats, voting rights groups, and even some Republicans worry could be used as a pretext not to certify the election outcome if Vice President Kamala Harris carries Georgia. That includes mandating a hand-count of election day ballots, requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, and giving county officials access to “all election-related documentation.” Any attempt to refuse to certify the results, even if unsuccessful, could be weaponized by Trump and his allies to sow distrust about the voting process. (Those rule changes are also being challenged in court.)

In his opinion, which came as in-person early voting kicked off in Georgia, McBurney addressed the consequences if Georgia election officials attempt to defy the law. “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,” he wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.”