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Wood questioned the basis for the lawsuit for several reasons, including legal quality, but she also expressed concern that the separation of the ballots might cause some potential voters not to vote them.
“We risk preventing other voters from entering,” the judge said. “I’m concerned on many levels about what it would mean at this point to change course. … Some voters may not understand what it means to have your vote set aside for possible future questioning.
Earlier in the session, the judge mocked a GOP lawyer who claimed data from the corresponding voters’ lists showed voters had voted in two different races in the Senate or were about to do so.
“The fact that someone voted in California, for example, in the November election and the fact that they then vote in Georgia for the January election does not prove that they voted twice for the Senate,” he said. said Wood, appointed by President George W. Buisson. “This is what Aristotelian logic tells us. This, in itself, proves nothing. (California did not hold a Senate election this year.)
GOP and campaigns attorney George Meros said data suggests 400 to 500 newly registered people voted in November elections in other states with Senate contests this year. Meros, who is based in Florida, described some people as having “run” to Georgia to register and said the facts “very strongly suggest that it was not an accident.”
“I respectfully suggest that there is more than an equal chance that some will vote or vote twice” for the Senate, Meros said.
Meros asked Wood to issue an order to separate the ballots of recent registrants from those of those already on the lists. But the judge noted that in order to get that kind of order early in the case, a litigant must clearly demonstrate that he will prevail and that serious prejudice is imminent.
“Remember, this is amazing relief you are looking for. You can’t just come here and say, “We think it might have happened.” You have an extraordinary burden to carry and right now, at best, all you can say is that someone has voted for something in a state and someone wants to vote for something else. in another state, but I don’t see any evidence that anyone voted twice for a senator, ”said the judge, who sits in the coastal region of Brunswick, Georgia.
In particular, Wood seemed skeptical that the relief Republicans sought would actually help resolve the complaints Republicans have raised.
“How would you put aside those ballots to prove that someone voted twice for the Senate?” Wood asked the state at one point.
Meros said some voters, if questioned, might admit to having voted in more than one Senate contest. But the judge seemed deeply skeptical of questioning voters.
“They could take the fifth,” she said, referring to the Fifth Amendment for protecting against self-incrimination.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly warned against people outside of state registering in Georgia for the sole purpose of voting in the second round. His office has opened an investigation into such a case – against a Republican lawyer from Florida.
“Those who move to Georgia just to vote in the second round of the Senate with no intention of staying are committing a crime punishable by jail time and heavy fines,” Raffensperger said in a statement earlier this month when announced an investigation into the Floridian. . “They will be found, they will be investigated and they will be punished.”
The state also argued Friday that Republican plaintiffs had acted too slowly.
“What is this case? This is a belated attempt to change the rules of the game as the clock strikes midnight, ”said Russ Willard, senior election counsel at the Georgia attorney general’s office. “We are halfway through the election stunt. We see the tidal basin at the bottom. “
“We would be in a situation of trying to change the wheels of the car going down the freeway,” Willard continued, saying a change like this would be disruptive.
The lawsuit filed on Thursday argues that a criminal provision in federal voting rights law that prohibits individuals from voting for “the same candidacy or position” makes it illegal for some newly registered voters to vote in the January 5 run-off. .
However, state attorneys and local officials said this provision was ambiguous. Willard said reading it as the plaintiffs do could even make it illegal for longtime Georgians to vote in the November general election and again in the run-off next month.
It was the third case brought by Republicans in the past two days that a federal judge heard and rejected or refused before closely monitored flows. The two previous cases were aimed at restrict the postal voting process by various methods.
The first of the two cases was also brought by the State party, the NRSC and the campaigns of Perdue and Loeffler, which sought to tighten the process of verifying signatures for postal votes. Judge Eleanor Louise Ross, a person appointed by former President Barack Obama, found Republican plaintiffs lacking in quality and dismissed the case from the bench.
Republican lawyers in this case have tried to distance themselves from the legal efforts of the Trump team and his allies. “I am not Sidney Powell. I am not Lin Wood. I am not Rudy Giuliani, ”said former acting attorney general George Terwilliger, who was one of the attorneys arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs. “We have nothing to do with it.”
Despite having similar plaintiffs, the lawyers are different for the two cases. There is an outstanding case of the Republican Party of Georgia and the Republican National Committee in state court where some of the attorneys who argued Friday’s case represent the GOP. A hearing is scheduled for Christmas Eve in this case.
Earlier Thursday, another district judge slaughtered a third case, also from the bench. This lawsuit, filed by the 12th Republican Congressional District Committee and others, was aimed at blocking drop boxes, preventing ballots from opening until election day, and more.
District Judge James Randal Hall, another person appointed by Bush, also said the plaintiffs lack standing to bring their cases. But he went further than Ross – saying that even if they had, he still would not have granted the relief requested due to the proximity of the election.
“We are not on the eve of an election. We are, as far as this particular election is concerned, we are getting closer to half time. Absentee ballots have already been printed and mailed, and in some cases fired, ”Hall said.
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