An emergency hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 27, in the Fulton County Republican Party’s lawsuit against the board of commissioners over its failure to appoint nominees to the election board.
Superior Court Judge David Emerson scheduled the hearing, ordering the county to produce agendas for any commission meetings held since the date of the court’s last order, and copies of minutes of any of those meetings.
The Fulton GOP sought contempt charges and civil fines against five members after the board of commissioners failed to approve its nominations of Jason Frazier and Julie Adams to the Fulton County Board of Elections at its Aug. 20 meeting. The appointment failed on a 2-2 vote, with Bob Ellis and Bridget Thorne voting for the appointees, and Dana Barrett and Mo Ivory voting against. Other commissioners either left the meeting before the vote or were absent.
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The contempt motion claimed the defendants have been willfully refusing to comply with the court’s original order on Aug. 4, and with the court’s denial of a stay request on Aug. 15.
The motion for contempt filed by the Fulton County GOP named Barrett, Ivory, Commission Chair Robb Pitts, and Commissioners Khadijah Abdur-Rahman and Marvin Arrington Jr.
Emerson ruled on Aug. 15 in a court order that said the court can only compel the public body to act and cannot dictate the decision. His order added that the commission’s only authority is to appoint the nominees submitted by the executive officer of the political party.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on the commission “to follow the rule of law and appoint all bipartisan appointees, not just the ones they prefer,” in a news release after the commission’s Aug. 20 vote.
Ivory said during the commission meeting before the vote that the elected commissioners cannot be compelled to vote in a specific way. She called Adams and Frazier election deniers, referring to their support of President Donald Trump, who claimed the 2020 election was rigged in Joe Biden’s favor.
Ellis argued that the nominees met the requirements to serve on the board of elections and should be appointed.
“This is a matter that has been sort of well documented, and it’s been set up on partisan lines all along. It looks like it’s going to be set up on partisan lines today, but maybe there’ll be a miracle,” Ellis said before the appointments failed on a 2-2 vote.
The nonprofit organization Fair Fight said in a news release after the Aug. 20 vote that Adams and Frazier “are known to be critical operatives in Donald Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ movement.” The nominees were called key operatives in the Election Integrity Network, the release said.
Adams refused to certify the 2024 results in Fulton’s presidential primary preference, claiming them to be inaccurate. She filed a lawsuit, in which the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling, affirming that local election board members must certify election results by the deadline outlined in state law.
Frazier has been rejected by the commission as a nominee to the elections board in the past.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
