Georgia smashes records on first day of early voting as GOP hand-counting rule blocked by judge

A record number of Georgia voters submitted their ballots on Tuesday, the first day of early voting in the state, just as a superior court judge blocked a rule that would have required poll workers to count ballots by hand.

Approximately 320,000 people went to the polls to vote early in Georgia, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Another 24,000 people have already submitted their absentee ballot.

The previous early voting first-day record was in 2020 when approximately 136,000 ballots were submitted.

Voters may have been motivated to vote early because the state has undergone a series of controversial election law changes – all passed as a result of election integrity concerns Donald Trump cast over the state in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

That includes a law that would have required election poll workers to break open sealed ballots and count them by hand to ensure the number of ballots matched the total counted by machines. Poll workers would not have been required to tally the number of votes for each candidate.

A Republican-majority State Election Board passed the law in September. It would have gone into effect on October 22 – a week after early voting began and two weeks before Election Day.

However, Judge Robert McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court blocked the law from taking effect on Tuesday, saying it was “too much, too late.”

“The administrative chaos that will - not may - ensue is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the SEB) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal, and orderly,” McBurney wrote in his order issued on Tuesday evening.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, both Republicans, warned the election board that implementing the rule so close to Election Day would be difficult and chaotic.

But Trump-backed members of the election board went ahead anyway, voting 3-2 to implement it along with a series of other election changes they claim were intended to create “stability” and enhance integrity.

Voters in the state had been warned that the changes would cause delays in election certification results – likely motivating them to turn up early to vote.

Though board members denied the changes having anything to do with partisan views, they undoubtedly mirror concerns and false claims of fraud raised by Trump, the Republican nominee.

After losing the 2020 election, Trump falsely asserted he won and fraudulent ballots were illegally submitted to help President Joe Biden win – Georgia was one of the states subject to Trump’s claims.

Trump, and 18 other individuals, were charged in Fulton County with allegedly attempting to overturn election results in the state by implementing a fake elector scheme. Those proceedings are ongoing, though temporarily paused.