Notable Opinions: October 31

The Supreme Court issued just one notable opinion today:

Martin et al. v. Fulton County Bd. of Registration and Elections et al.

(Editors note: the case was briefed and argued to the court under the name Coalition for Good Governance et al. v. Raffensperger; both of those defendants were dismissed by the trial court, so the court ordered the case be re-styled for purposes of the opinion). 

The case involves a challenge to the 2018 Lieutenant Governor election, in which Geoff Duncan defeated Sarah Riggs Amico by 123,172 votes,  in which the plaintiffs alleged defects in electronic voting machines case the election into doubt. The plaintiffs pointed to an unusually large disparity between the votes cast in the Lieutenant Governor's race and other races (both the governor's race and "down-ticket" races). During the last four election cycles, the race for Lieutenant Governor has received an average of 99.2 percent of the number of votes cast for Governor; the race for Secretary of State has received 98.6 percent; and the other down ballot statewide races have averaged 98 percent.

In short, the plaintiffs claimed that they placed the outcome of the election "in doubt" by offering evidence of a few specific instances of voting machine malfunction, statistical anomalies in voting patterns, and prior general elections that show Georgia uses "profoundly vulnerable [voting] machines."

Following a series of discovery disputes and a bench trial, the trial court dismissed the petition because it found that even if every contested vote went to Riggs-Amico, Duncan still would have won the election by a comfortable margin.

In a 94 page opinion authored by Justice Warren, the Court affirmed the dismissal. The court addressed three basic contentions raised by the plaintiff-petitioners: (1) that the trial court did not allow sufficient, or sufficiently lengthy discovery; (2) that the trial court made an erroneous finding of fact about the number of illegal or irregular votes; and (3) that the trial court erred in denying petitioner's request for a jury trial.

The Court concluded that

(1) the trial court did not abuse the broad discretion given to it by the Election Code in the way it managed discovery;
(2) despite an erroneous factual finding about the number of potential illegal or irregular votes, the trial court reached the correct legal conclusion when it determined the plaintiff-petitioners failed to place the result of the election in doubt; and
(3) the trial court was correct to deny the plaintiff-petitioners' request for a jury trial.

The full opinion is available here.  The oral argument is available here.

Murder convictions and Life Sentences

S19A0789. SHAW v. THE STATE
S19A0803. EBERHART v. THE STATE
S19A0825, S19X0826. FORD v. TATE 
S19A0535. THE STATE v. BEARD
S19A0597. RICKS v. THE STATE
S19A0644. GREEN v. THE STATE  
S19A0684. DADDARIO v. THE STATE