A US judge in the state of Georgia blocked an order to have millions of ballots in November’s presidential election counted by hand. According to Judge Robert McBurney, the three poll workers would not have been trained enough to handle millions of ballots and that the last-minute switch “would have precipitated administrative chaos.”. The pro-Trump majority of the Georgia election board approved the hand count requirement last month, and Tuesday’s ruling has been welcomed by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
US Judge Blocks Georgia
Early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday and has broken the state’s record for the largest single election day, with more than 459,000 of those eligible casting ballots ahead of the election day on 5 November. Officials said more than 459,000 voted in person or by post on the first day of voting – more than triple the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.
Five million votes were cast for president in Georgia that year, as Democrat Joe Biden won the state by just under 12,000 votes.
Trump refused to accept the result. He is holding a criminal trial in which he accuses others of attempting illegally to alter it. A recording of a telephone conversation contains him ordering Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”. A judge handling the Georgia case has recently dismissed that count – and five others:.
The Atlanta appeals court will decide this case, a move requested by Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis Tuesday to reinstate six dismissed counts against former President Donald Trump. Former President Trump was on hand Tuesday evening in Atlanta, Georgia, where he called upon his supporters to deliver him a victory that was “too big to rig,” a reference to longtime, unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen by mass fraud.
Meanwhile, on the same day, Democratic candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris continued efforts to woo black voters, after polls indicated Trump was making inroads with this key demographic. She urged black voters not to give up on politics, telling radio host Charlamagne Tha God (real name Lenard McKelvey): “The things that we want, and are prepared to fight for, won’t happen if we’re not active and if we don’t participate.”
In a related ruling Monday, Judge McBurney ordered members of the election board must attest to vote results, after a Republican appointee to the board refused to do so for the results of Georgia’s presidential primary earlier this year. Her campaign welcomed the temporary block of the hand-count rule, saying it was an attempt to sow doubt in the voting process.
The certification case is one of several election-related cases making the rounds through the courts in Georgia, one of seven key swing states expected to determine the contest between Trump and Harris.
However, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ruled that requesting hand counts mere weeks before the elections would “create more chaos than clarity.” Instead, she cited some proven processes of auditing and verifying results without resorting to manual counts as a suitable alternative, but acknowledged that election security is indeed a valid concern.
The verdict is one of the latest flashpoints in the country’s continued national debate over voting methods and election integrity. Since the election in 2020, Georgia, once considered a true battleground state, has been under intense scrutiny with bipartisan tensions running high.
Hand-count order supporters, on the other hand, were disappointed by the verdict as state officials warned that “some voters may still have lingering questions about machine tabulations.” Meanwhile, opponents of the plan to count votes by hand had some cause for jubilation over the verdict as “a victory in the battle to preserve election efficiency and voter confidence.”.
This development has state election officials scrambling on the eve of Election Day to finalize their procedures. Though Georgia law does provide for postelection audits, including limited hand recounts, most observers believe this ruling stands as a necessary protection against hastily implemented changes.
In the state of Georgia, its very close votes in earlier elections have drawn attention to how it would carry out vote counting and reporting since millions will be casting their ballots.
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