WAYNESBORO, Va. – A judge in a rural Virginia town has ordered two officials there to certify election results after they filed a lawsuit last month and threatened not to certify unless they could count ballots by hand.

Waynesboro Board of Elections Chairman Curtis Lilly and Vice Chairman Scott Mares argued that election officials do not have access to votes counted by machines, preventing them from verifying “the results of the voting machine's secret poll.”

Five registered voters then filed a separate lawsuit to force officials to certify the vote, arguing that they would otherwise be disenfranchised. They said officials had no discretion over the certification process. It is county officials, not election board members, who are responsible for verifying the accuracy of the vote. And they noted that voting machines are authorized by the Virginia Constitution and required by state law.

On Monday, Judge Paul Dryer issued a ruling ordering officials to complete the certification.

“The concerns that defendants raise about the security and accuracy of the election process can best be raised through the legislative process,” Dryer wrote. “The personal beliefs of members of a local election board cannot derail the electoral process for the entire Commonwealth.”

Thomas Ranieri, the defendants' attorney, said they agreed to comply with the order. “They are law-abiding citizens,” he said.

The order does not resolve the original lawsuit, which is still pending.

Research shows that manual counting is actually more error-prone than machine tabulating. It is also more costly and more likely to result in delayed results. But election conspiracy theorists across the US have moved to support hand-counted ballots, four years after former President Donald Trump falsely claimed the past election was stolen from him.