ATLANTA — A judge has ordered elected leaders in Georgia’s Fulton County to appoint two Republican nominees they had rejected to the county’s election board.
The county Republican Party sued in June seeking to force the Board of Commissioners to appoint the party’s nominees to the county Board of Registration and Elections, arguing that the commissioners were required to do so by law. In a ruling entered Monday, Senior Judge David Emerson agreed that the law doesn’t give Board of Commissioners the discretion to veto qualified nominees proposed by political parties.
The election board in the heavily Democratic county, which includes most of the city of Atlanta, is made up of five people. The Board of Commissioners chooses the chair, and the county Republican and Democratic parties each nominate two people to be appointed by the commissioners. Nominees must live in Fulton County, be registered to vote and cannot be public office holders.
Don Samuel, a lawyer representing the Board of Commissioners, said they are “disappointed in the court’s decision and are evaluating whether to appeal.”
Although the board is required to appoint two people nominated by each party, he said in an email, it is not required to appoint whoever is nominated “regardless of how qualified or unqualified the nominee may be.” He added, “The BOC does not simply rubber-stamp any nominee.”
Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., part of the Democratic majority on the board, said the judge’s ruling strips commissioners of their discretion, “treating us more like record-keepers than decision-makers.” But being a county commissioner is “inherently discretionary,” he said in an emailed statement, adding that commissioners “are elected to exercise judgment on behalf of our constituents.”
Commissioner Bridget Thorne, a Republican, celebrated the ruling as a victory in an Instagram post.
The Board of Commissioners had voted in May to reject Republican Party nominees Julie Adams and Jason Frazier. Democratic members of the Board of Commissioners raised concerns about their qualifications given their past actions.
Adams, a sitting election board member, had abstained from certifying primary election results last year and unsuccessfully sued the board seeking a ruling saying county officials can refuse to certify elections. Frazier has formally challenged the eligibility of thousands of Fulton County voters and was previously denied a spot on the county election board.
In his ruling, Emerson said, “The Board shall appoint the two members as nominated by the county executive committee chairperson. Those nominees are Jason Frazier and Julie Adams.”
He wrote that the law outlines the process by which members of the election board “shall” be appointed and that he did not find anything in the law “to support a conclusion that ‘shall’ in the appointment clause is directory only.”
Elections in Fulton County had a yearslong history of problems, including long lines to vote and delays in reporting results. A particularly troubled primary in 2020 resulted in the appointment of an independent monitor to observe the general election that year as part of a consent agreement between the county and the State Election Board. The monitor said the county’s elections were badly managed but he found no evidence of fraud. Another monitoring team appointed to observe last year’s general election said it was “organized and orderly.”
President Donald Trump and his supporters zeroed in on Fulton County in the wake of the 2020 general election, claiming without proof that election fraud had cost him victory in Georgia. Local, state and federal officials have repeatedly said there’s no evidence that fraud affected the outcome of that election, but conspiracy theories continued to circulate.