The Georgia Supreme Court has declined to reinstate an array of rules approved this year by a pro-Trump majority of the state’s election board that a lower court judge had tossed last week after calling them unconstitutional and void. The decision all but ensures that the rules will not be in effect for the November vote.

At issue were more than a half-dozen new rules, including one that would have mandated the hand-counting of ballots, which critics feared would delay certification of the election.

The state Supreme Court’s decision is a victory for Democrats and voting rights groups. They had sued to block the board’s decisions, arguing that they were being imposed too close to the election and would be impossible to implement without causing disruptions.

Members of the board’s majority have defended the rules, saying they were intended to make state elections more secure and transparent. The flurry of rulemaking, which occurred in recent weeks and months, was the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the result of the presidential election this year.

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The Republican National Committee intervened on the state board’s behalf to appeal last week’s ruling. Although the state’s highest court accepted the appeal, it declined to stay the lower court judge’s decision to toss the rules for this fall’s vote, and it also declined to hear the case on an emergency schedule.

The RNC can appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court has a track record of declining to hear election cases related so directly to state law as this one. The lower court decision accused the state board of overstepping its authority under Georgia law, effectively legislating without having the power to do so.

An RNC spokeswoman defended the rules and predicted that the appeal would ultimately prevail.

The voting rights group Fair Fight called Tuesday’s decision “another monumental victory for Georgia voters, the rule of law, and the independence of our elections.”