appellants to clear, and our caselaw provides for emergency appeals from TRO decisions only in the direst of circumstances. In Ingram, we permitted an appeal where a prisoner was set to be executed within twenty-four hours of a TRO being denied. Ingram, 50 F.3d at 899–900. In Schiavo, we permitted an appeal where a court denied a TRO that would have put a terminally ill patient back on life support. Schiavo, 403 F.3d at 1225.
The plaintiffs here are not in the same position as an inmate about to be executed or a patient removed from life support. The “irreparable” harm threatened here is that voting machines will be “wiped,” erasing the data they contain and preventing the plaintiffs from conducting the forensic inspection they request. But the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the alleged harm is imminent—that the defendants would have wiped all these machines county-by-county, destroying all the data they contain, unless the district court had granted broader relief on Sunday night. In fact, the district court’s order was specifically designed to avoid this consequence by enjoining the defendants from erasing or altering data on the machines in three counties. It preserved the status quo in a way that gave the plaintiffs what they said they wanted and was minimally disruptive to the State of Georgia’s ability to conduct special run-off elections in other counties. Nothing compelled an immediate appeal: had the plaintiffs not appealed the district court’s Sunday night order, the district court would have held the evidentiary hearing it set
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