Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from a county Republican Party that tried to keep four candidates from running on the GOP ballot because party officials viewed them as ideologically impure.

Both the Chattooga County Republican Party and the Catoosa County Republican Party asserted their right to keep candidates off the ballot if they found the candidates were not “Republican-enough”earlier this year.  While the Chattooga GOP didn’t keep any candidates from qualifying, the Catoosa party tried to keep sitting elected officials off the ballot.

The Georgia Supreme Court voted 9-0 to dismiss the appeal from the Catoosa County Republican Party, ruling that the party moved too slowly to overturn a lower court ruling. Presiding Justice Nels Peterson, writing for the court, said it would be wrong for the high court to require new Republican primary elections after voters already cast ballots.

“Elections matter. For this reason, parties wanting a court to throw out the results of an election after it has occurred must clear significant hurdles,” Peterson wrote. “And for decades, our precedent has made crystal clear that the first such hurdle is for the parties seeking to undo an election to have done everything within their power to have their claims decided before the election occurred.”

Lookout Mountain Superior Court Judge Don Thompson had denied the Catoosa Republicans their motion to keep the elected officials off the primary ballot earlier this year.