Votes for Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz will count in Georgia for now

ATLANTA (AP) — In yet another reversal, votes in Georgia for presidential candidates Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz will count for now after the Georgia Supreme Court paused orders disqualifying them.

The court’s decision Sunday came as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said military and overseas ballots will be mailed beginning Tuesday with West and De la Cruz listed as candidates.

This doesn’t guarantee that votes for the two will be counted. They could still be disqualified by the state high court, in which case votes for them would be discarded.

West is running as an independent in Georgia. De la Cruz is the nominee for the Party of Socialism and Liberation but she technically qualified for the Georgia ballot as an independent.

Presidential choices for Georgia voters will definitely include Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Kamala Harris, Libertarian Chase Oliver and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, the most candidates since 2000. But if West and De la Cruz are also included, it would be the first time since 1948 that more than four candidates seek Georgia’s presidential electors.

Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians automatically qualify for elections in Georgia.

In an interview Friday in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur, before a campaign appearance in nearby Clarkston, De la Cruz said she wasn’t “naive” about how hard it would be to put her name before voters, likening efforts to keep her off the ballot to efforts to keep people from voting.

“We know just how undemocratic the electoral system, the so-called democracy of this country is,” De la Cruz said. “We knew that we were going to face challenges here in Georgia., in the South, just generally there’s a history of voter suppression, and I don’t