Georgia court rejects local Republican attempt to handpick primary candidates

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from a county Republican Party that tried to keep four candidates from running on the GOP ballot because party officials viewed them as ideologically impure.

The court voted 9-0 to dismiss the appeal from the Catoosa County Republican Party, ruling that the party moved too slowly to overturn a lower court ruling. Presiding Justice Nels Peterson, writing for the court, said it would be wrong for the high court to require new Republican primary elections after voters already cast ballots.

“Elections matter. For this reason, parties wanting a court to throw out the results of an election after it has occurred must clear significant hurdles,” Peterson wrote. “And for decades, our precedent has made crystal clear that the first such hurdle is for the parties seeking to undo an election to have done everything within their power to have their claims decided before the election occurred.”

But the court didn’t get to the root of the dispute that divided Republicans in Catoosa and nearby Chattooga County this spring — which is about whether county parties should be able to act as gatekeepers for their primary ballots. The idea was fostered by a group called the Georgia Republican Assembly, which seeks to influence the larger party.

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