RHODEN v. ATHENS-CLARKE COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS

Jerry NeSmith was running for an Athens-Clarke County commission seat but died three days before the June 2020 election. Voters still cast more ballots for him than for his opponent, Jesse Houle, but the county elections board declared those votes void under Georgia law and certified Houle as the winner. A group of registered voters who had supported NeSmith sued in superior court, arguing the election should be redone because the ballots were cast using electronic marking devices and scanners, not traditional paper ballots, so the voiding statute should not apply, and that voiding their votes violated their constitutional rights. The superior court dismissed their challenge, and the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed. The court found the election was still legally a paper-ballot election because voters' choices were printed on paper before being scanned, and it held that voiding the votes did not violate the voters' rights to vote, equal protection, or due process.

The court held that Georgia's statutes voiding votes cast for a candidate who died before the election apply to elections conducted with electronic ballot markers and optical scanners because those technologies still produce paper ballots, and that applying this rule did not violate the voters' constitutional rights because the burden on voting rights was slight and outweighed by the state's interest in efficient, fair elections.

The ruling confirms that Georgia's rule voiding votes for deceased candidates applies even in elections using modern electronic ballot-marking and scanning technology, giving election boards statewide clear guidance and giving voters certainty about what happens when a candidate dies shortly before an election.

Affirmed

1. The court first decided whether the election counted as a 'paper ballot' election under Georgia law, since the vote-voiding statutes (O.C.G.A. §§ 21-2-437(d) and 21-2-438(a)) apply only to elections using paper ballots.
2. Relying on testimony that voters' selections made on electronic marking devices were printed onto paper ballots before being scanned and counted, the court concluded the election was still conducted with paper ballots, consistent with its earlier decision in Jones v. Norris treating different ballot-marking technologies as adjuncts to paper voting rather than substitutes for it.
3. Because the election used paper ballots, the statutes required that all votes cast for NeSmith, who died before Election Day, be treated as void, making Houle the winner despite receiving fewer total votes.
4. Applying the Anderson-Burdick test, a balancing framework courts use to weigh how much an election rule burdens voting rights against the government's reasons for the rule, the court found the burden on the voters' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights was minimal because each voter still had a chance to vote for an eligible candidate.
5. The court found Georgia's interest in efficiently and fairly finishing elections, avoiding costly new elections, and ensuring winners can take office on time was a reasonable, nondiscriminatory justification that outweighed the slight burden on voters, so no constitutional violation occurred.
6. The court also rejected comparisons to Bush v. Gore and various vote-dilution cases, explaining that those cases involved different problems (ad hoc recount standards or unequal voting power across districts) not present in this straightforward, pre-existing rule voiding votes for deceased candidates.

• election contest
• deceased candidate
• paper ballots
• equal protection
• Athens-Clarke County