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The ruling will come just over a week after the

May 1, 2017 by Lena Webb

The ruling will come just over a week after the Federal Elections Commission, which was tasked with enforcing the state's electronic voting rules that required electronic voting machines to be switched only when needed for votes counted in local elections, released a long-awaited report on how the state's electronic voter rolls have improved.

There have been many challenges to the system, including the lack of new voting machines and a lack of access to early voting.

Totenberg wrote that the State of Georgia isn't a "state in need of new electronic voting machines" and that the state "has no other means of improving the performance of electronic voting machines."

"There are a number of other options to address the need to improve the electronic voting system that the State of Georgia already provides," she added.

The ruling also says that the Georgia Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees electronic voting machines, "does not have the authority to deny or prohibit access to a voter in the event of an accident or emergency."

In a filing in her case, Totenberg noted that the State Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to a $1.67 million grant from the Federal Election Commission to help it continue the program's operations in Georgia. The group's proposal, filed by the ACLU and the American Civil Liberties Union, would award $1 million to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2016 to help expand access to electronic voting machines.

The ACLU is working to reach out to the federal commission to request an investigation into the issue.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on Totenberg's ruling.

The GAO study, which was released in November, found that the state's electronic voter rolls are at least as secure as they have been in the past. The agency has issued about 800,000 rolls since it began tracking the number of voters registered last November, the GAO study found.

Despite this, some observers say that the lack of electronic voting infrastructure could be a problem for other states.

"Voting systems that have been in business since 1887 are much more secure because of the security of the voting machines they use," said Robert Nilsen, a researcher at the Cato Institute.

Nilsen argued that the state's electronic voting roll system is simply not secure and that the need for new technology is an ongoing challenge.

"If one of the things the Department of Health and Human Services needs to do is look at whether the electronic voting system was ever used, would it be better than the old system?" wrote