Georgia, a battleground state in the Nov. 5 presidential election between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, saw record-breaking voter turnout Tuesday, according to state officials.
According to Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s No. 2 election official, at least 252,000 voters have cast ballots at early-voting locations as of 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT), which is almost twice as many as the 136,000 who took part in the first day of early voting in the 2020 election.
He said, “Spectacular turnout,” on social media. At a campaign rally in Atlanta, Trump said he was excited about Georgia’s early vote. “The votes are coming in, and they’re coming in at a nice level for us,” he stated.
Voters in the US are increasingly choosing to cast their ballots early, either in person or by mail.
According to the Election Lab at the University of Florida, about one in seven voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2020.
However, Trump invoked fabricated allegations of mail ballot fraud in his vain attempt to reverse his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, and many Republicans opposed the huge growth of mail voting that year, arguing that it was less secure than in-person voting.
While party officials are urging supporters to vote in advance, some Republicans are still certain that voters should only be able to cast their ballots in person on election day.
Nationwide, 5.5 million Americans have already voted this year, according to Election Lab. By contrast, 27 million people had cast their ballots at this point in the 2020 election as voters sought to avoid crowded polling places during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like some other states, Georgia has tightened its mail-voting laws since then, requiring voters who want to cast an absentee ballot to provide proof of identity and limiting the number of places they can deposit their ballots.
Georgia is one of the seven competitive battleground states expected to play a decisive role in deciding the election.
A Georgia judge on Tuesday temporarily halted a rule requiring clerks to verify vote totals by hand counting ballots in the 2024 election.
Judge Robert McBurney said in his Tuesday ruling that it was appropriate to pause the change because it introduced fresh uncertainty into the process just weeks before Election Day.
