https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/19/federal-judge-rejects-trump-allys-bid-block-election-certification-georgia-438563
At the conclusion of a three-hour virtual hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg delivered a withering assessment of the suit that a prominent attorney, Lin Wood, filed to try to stop officials from finalizing a tally that has Trump trailing Biden by more than 12,000 votes.
Grimberg said it was clear that, as an individual voter, Wood lacked legal standing to mount the challenge to Georgia’s election procedures. But the judge — a former prosecutor whom Trump nominated last year — also emphasized that evidence of improprieties seemed limited to isolated cases and far short of what would be needed to justify a federal judge stepping in to alter the state’s election results.
“It would require halting the certification of results in a state election in which millions of people have voted,” the judge said. “It would interfere with an election after the voting was done.”
The judge also seemed to allude to the acrimonious atmosphere surrounding the election as a reason to be wary about interfering in the process as Wood requested.
“It harms the public interest in countless ways, particularly in the environment in which this election occurred,” Grimberg said. “To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and potentially disenfranchisement that I find has no basis in fact or in law.”
Much of Wood’s suit complained about a consent decree, reached in March, that requires officials to try to contact a voter before disqualifying a mail-in ballot because of a signature that does not appear to match the one on file.
However, Russ Willard, a lawyer in the Georgia attorney general’s office, said there was no legitimate reason for Wood to come to court eight months later to object to that widely publicized deal.
“Plaintiff attempts to change the rules at the end of the game in order to alter the score,” Willard said
