The judges met, in private, over a two-day period in May, for what might seem like a minor task: to choose the fifth member of an elections board in rural Spalding county, Georgia.
But the meetings were by no means routine. There is no record of their vote or their discussions. The interviews with Democratic and Republican applicants were conducted in private, via Zoom calls. And the position was only vacant because of a new law, specific only to Spalding county, recently introduced by the area’s two Republican state lawmakers.