NOT NOW

Federal Judge Blocks Effort to Halt Georgia’s New Restrictive Voting Laws

The judge said it was too late to change the law given runoffs are underway for the state House of Representatives, but he didn’t close the door on future challenges.

A federal judge has blocked an attempt to remove parts of Georgia’s new restrictive voting laws, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Judge J.P. Boulee wrote in an opinion Wednesday that he didn’t want to “change the law in the ninth inning” in light of runoffs occurring for the state House of Representatives, but he didn’t close the door on future legal challenges. “Election administrators have prepared to implement the challenged rules, have implemented them at least to some extent and now would have to grapple with a different set of rules in the middle of the election,” he wrote. “The risk of disrupting the administration of an ongoing election ... outweigh the alleged harm to plaintiffs at this time.”

The lawsuit, brought by the election security group the Coalition for Good Governance, asked the courts to invalidate sections requiring voters to request absentee ballots 11 days prior to the election, and allow election watchers to proceed unobstructed. While an immediate injunction was denied, the lawsuit itself is still pending.