Certification of Georgia Election Results Delayed

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (per Totenberg, J.) has just issued an injunction:

1. Ordering the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office “to immediately establish and publicize on its website a secure and free-access hotline or website for provisional ballot voters to access to determine whether their provisional ballots were counted and if not, the reason why;”
2. Ordering the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office “to direct each of the 159 county election superintendents to similarly publicize the availability of the hotline or secure website on the county and county election websites;”
3. Enjoining the Georgia Secretary of State “from certifying the results of the election prior to Friday, November 16 at 5:00 P.M.;”
4. Ordering the Georgia Secretary of State, upon receipt of the certified returns from the county election supervisors, to either: (i) direct the county election superintendents to remit certified returns to all counties with 100 or more provisional ballots and to engage in a good faith review of the eligibility of voters issued provisional ballots due to code PR (“provisional registration”), using all available registration documentation.  Such documentation should include registration information made available by voters themselves, rather than relying solely on the registration information in eNet, and should also include any audit trails documenting modifications or alterations of registration data that Merritt Beaver, the SOS Chief Information officer, testified exists to show changes regarding a voter’s registration status in the electronic database; or (ii) engage in an independent review of this information using documentation available to the Secretary of State and the information referenced above.  To avoid any delay in the final certification process, the Secretary of State should engage in this review on a rolling basis as certified results from the local county superintendents are received. This remedy does not require the extension of any mandated elections deadlines provided under Georgia’s election regime or the creation of any entirely different processes outside the parameters of the current procedures in place that govern the actions of the local elections officials or the Secretary of State in verifying voter eligibility, tabulating, computing, or canvassing votes, and verifying the accuracy of the voter returns.” (Statutory citation omitted.)

I note that, as of 11:35 P.M., neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times has reported this story.  In other words, I scooped them.