'Entirely wrongheaded': Georgia GOP lashes out after election rule changes swatted away

Georgia Republicans lashed out after a judge smacked down seven election rule changes as "illegal, unconstitutional and void."

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox found the rules violated state laws, including one that would have required county election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results and another that would have required officials to hand-count ballots.

Cox said the “reasonable inquiry” rule “adds an additional and undefined step into the certification process,” CNN reported. The examination rule, he said, “creates a statutorily unbounded scope under which (election) superintendents can consider unauthorized materials when tabulating, canvassing, and certifying election results.”

On Wednesday night, Josh McKoon, the Georgia Republican Party chairman, blasted the ruling in a statement.

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“Today’s ruling by Judge Cox is entirely wrongheaded and ignores years of rule making by the State Elections Board, including the invention of ballot drop boxes by adoption of an emergency rule which took effect the very day it was approved," said McKoon. "Ballot drop boxes were nowhere to be found in Georgia statutory law and tellingly none of those complaining today had any concern about legalizing ballot drop boxes out of whole cloth in 2020."

McKoon added: "Unlike unregulated ballot drop boxes which caused tremendous confusion and to this day controversy around the 2020 election, these common sense rules will increase public confidence in elections administration. The only reason to oppose these rules is to make it easier to cheat."

He said the GOP plans to appeal what he called a "totally nonsensical decision at odds with decades of precedent and frankly common sense.”