On Thursday, national and state Republicans appealed against a ruling by a Georgia judge that seven recent election rules passed by the State Election Board of Georgia were “illegal and unconstitutional.”

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Georgia Republican Party have appealed a ruling by Fulton County Superior Court judge Thomas Cox. Cox ruled on Wednesday that the State Election Board lacked the authority to issue the rules, and ordered the board to inform all state officials and local election officials immediately that the rules were null and void and should not be followed.

Cox invalidated three rules, including one that required that ballots were counted by hand after polls closed and two others that dealt with certification of results.

In a Thursday statement, the RNC announced its appeal. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley has accused Cox “of the worst kind of judicial activist.”

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Whatley stated that “by overturning Georgia State Election Board rules, which were commonsense and passed to protect Georgia’s elections, he sided with Democrats who attacked transparency, accountability, integrity, and fairness of our elections.” “We immediately appealed to ensure that commonsense election rules are in place — we won’t let this stand.”

Alex Kaufman is an attorney for the Georgia Republican Party. He said that on Thursday, the party had filed an urgent notice of appeal at the Georgia Supreme Court.

The ruling was made in response to a lawsuit brought by Eternal Vigilance Action (EVA), an organization founded by Scot Turner. Scot is a former Republican state representative. The lawsuit argued that State Election Board had overstepped their authority by adopting these rules.

Turner, in a message to The Associated Press, wrote: “Seeing the Republican Party argue for unelected bureaucrats to have the power of making new laws is a departure from conservative values.” “But we were expecting them to appeal, and we are prepared to fight to rein in this administrative state power grab for as long as it takes.”

Democrats and voting right groups hailed the ruling as a win. They said that rules passed by the State Election Board in recent months may be used by Donald Trump’s allies to question the results of the presidential election if the former President loses to Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris. Three Trump-endorsed Republicans now make up the majority of the five-member State Election Board. The board has passed new rules despite the opposition of the lone Democrat on the board and the nonpartisan chairman.

The county election officials, who are the ones in charge of the elections around the state, have expressed concern over the new rules that will be implemented so close to Election Day.

Cox also said that the following rules are unconstitutional and illegal: require an individual delivering an absentee vote in person to present a photo ID and signature; require video surveillance and recording after the polls close at early voting; increase the designated areas for partisan poll-watchers who can stand outside tabulation centers and require daily updates on the number of votes cast.

The judge overturned a rule which required three different poll workers to count by hand the number Election Day ballots in order to ensure that the electronic tallies of scanners, check-in computer and voting machines match the number of paper votes.

Georgia voters select their choices on a touchscreen voting device that prints out a paper that includes a list of human-readable choices and a QR code. The voter then places the ballot into a scanner that records votes. Hand-counting would only be done on the paper ballots, not the actual votes.

Many critics, including county election officials, have argued that hand-counting could slow down the reporting of the results and burden the poll workers after a long day. Also, they said that there wasn’t enough training time.

Supporters of the rule argued that it would only take minutes more to count, and not hours. The supporters of the rule also pointed out that scan memory cards containing vote totals could be sent to counties while the hand count is being completed, so reporting results would not be slowed.

Cox wrote in his letter that Georgia law “nowhere authorizes” the rule, and “proscribes the duties of the poll officers after the close of the polls.” Hand counting isn’t one of them.

The State Election Board passed two other rules in August that Cox had invalidated. They both have to do certification. The first defines certification as requiring that county officials conduct a “reasonable investigation” before certifying the results. However, it doesn’t specify what this means. One of the two includes language that allows county election officials to “examine all election-related documentation created during election conduct.”

They argue that these rules are needed to verify the accuracy of vote totals prior to the county election officials signing them off. Critics claimed that they could be used as a tool to delay or deny the certification.