Judge Denies Request To Postpone Georgia's June 9 Primary

A federal judge has denied a request to postpone Georgia's June 9 primary election, dismissing the case hours after a Thursday hearing. State officials have already delayed the election date twice because of the coronavirus.

Judge Timothy Batten wrote in a 12-page order that "the Framers of the Constitution did not envision a primary role for the courts in managing elections, but instead reserved election management to the legislatures," and that "courts should not substitute their own judgments for state election codes."

An election integrity group and several Georgia voters filed a lawsuit last month seeking to move the June 9, primary to June 30, along with requesting several other tweaks to the voting process because of the coronavirus.

The lawsuit is part of a larger set of challenges against the state's new $104 million touchscreen voting system. In this case, the plaintiffs argued that the ballot-marking devices were not suitable to use amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Batten wrote that the claims were dismissed because they represented a political question and not one that the court could decide. 

"A federal court has no authority to review a political question," he wrote. "It is epecially important during crises such as the present one involving a medical pandemic that the Court hew closely to the Constitution's original imperatives."

Ultimately, the judge wrote, ordering the state to adopt the myriad requests made in the lawsuit would require the court "to micromanage the State's election process" and that the requests did not resemble those made in typical election cases.

Early voting begins Monday, May 18 and will look different as elections officials have closed many early voting locations, and are scrambling to supply protective gear for staff and will set up fewer machines to follow social distancing protocols.