The move was a rare example of a conservative court siding with voters over state officials in a dispute over election rules, especially when the court was asked to act on the emergency.
But an unsigned order from the Supreme Court has opened the door for state Republican officials to try again to reinstate Georgia’s rules for electing committees in the November election. I left it.
This commission is Georgia’s regulator for investor-owned utilities such as power plants and telecommunications. Among its duties is the setting of residential, commercial and industrial utility rates.
Each of the five commission seats is assigned a specific district in which they must reside, but the commissioners themselves are elected in staggered statewide elections every six years.
But the judge’s ruling has since been put on hold by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, prompting voters to seek Supreme Court intervention this week.
The appeal’s arguments have focused, in part, on the so-called Purcell doctrine, which discourages federal court actions that disrupt election planning in the immediate vicinity of the election.
The Supreme Court said the 11th Circuit should not have used the principle to justify staying the trial judge’s order. Voters disputing the election rules noted that Georgia officials said the principles would not work if they appealed the commission’s rulings against the current election system.
The Supreme Court’s order comes after a series of lawsuits in which judges broke down along ideological lines about whether lower court rulings in favor of voting rights advocates should be withheld for the next election. .
Similarly, during the 2020 election, the Supreme Court suspended several lower court rulings that facilitate voting during the pandemic.
Many of these orders were made without explanation from the majority, but conservative judges wrote on several occasions to emphasize that adherence to the Purcell Principles was their motivation.
Source: www.cnn.com
