On August 20, U.S. District Court Judge J. P. Boulee, a Trump appointee, enjoined one part of SB 202, the bill passed earlier this year that voting rights advocates fiercely opposed. But the judge declined to enjoin four other provisions of that bill. Here is the 39-page order in Coalition for Good Governance v Kemp, n.d., 1:21cv-2070.

The enjoined law, the “Photography Rules”, ban the use of photographic or other electronic monitoring or recording devices to photograph or record the face of an electronic ballot marker while a ballot is being voted or while an elector’s votes are displayed on such electronic ballot marker.”

The judge declined to enjoin these other parts of the law: (1) the Observation Rule, which prohibits a person from intentionally observing an elector while casting a ballot in a manner that would allow such person to see for whom or what the elector is voting; (2) the Communication Rule, which prevents election observers from telling anyone else how a voter voted; (3) the Tally Rules, which prevents observers from tallying or estimating the number of absentee ballots that have arrived; (4) most important, the Ballot Application Rule, which says that an application for an absentee ballot must be sent in at least eleven days before the election.

There are several other pending lawsuits against SB 202 that deal with other parts of the law.