Peach Tree Times

A U.S. District Court judge denied a motion to halt the Jan. 5 runoff elections, saying it lacks jurisdiction in deciding the case.

District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. said the court was denying the temporary restraining order filed by L. Lin Wood Jr., as was his request for a hearing. 

Wood filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Rebecca Sullivan of the Georgia Department of Administrative Services, and attorneys David J. Worley, Matthew Mashburn and Anh Le. The Democratic Party of Georgia and DSCC were intervenor defendants.

The order says that Wood, a registered voter in Fulton County, is planning to vote in-person during the Jan. 5 runoff election, but he was seeking to have the election halted because the defendants were allegedly not properly conducting the election. His lawsuit alleges they are operating the election in a manner that is different from how the state legislature directs elections to be conducted.

Wood argues the defendants are operating the election improperly because of the installation of ballot drop boxes, processing the absentee ballots prior to Jan. 5 and the signature verification process for absentee ballots.

Wood contends that the election board’s actions, along with Dominion Voting Systems machines are a violation of his due process rights, rights to equal protection and a republican form of government. He was seeking a temporary restraining order to halt the election.

Batten says in the order that Wood was not able to show the existence of a favored or preferred class of voters in his complaint and that he did not show that he was discriminated against or any other harm as a result of being an in-person voter.

“Here, Wood presumes that a chain of events—including the manipulation of signature-comparison procedures, abuse of ballot drop boxes, intentional mishandling of absentee ballots, and exploitation of Dominion’s voting machines—will occur,” Batten writes in the order. “However, even taking his statements as true, Wood’s allegations show only the ‘possibility of future injury’ based on a series of events— which falls short of the requirement to establish a concrete injury.”

Batten noted that the allegations that there was fraud during the Nov. 3 election did not increase the possibility of harm during the runoff election.