A judge in the US state of Georgia has blocked an order that votes in the November presidential election be counted by hand.
Judge Robert McBurney ruled that poll workers would not have received sufficient training to handle millions of ballots, adding that the last-minute change would have led to “administrative chaos”.
The hand count mandate was passed by a majority of Trump supporters at the Georgia Board of Elections last month, and Tuesday’s decision was accepted by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday, with record numbers casting their ballots in a crucial situation ahead of election day on November 5.
More than 459,000 people voted in person or by mail on the first day of voting, officials said — more than triple the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.
About five million presidential votes were cast in Georgia that year, and Democrat Joe Biden won the state by less than 12,000.
Trump refused to accept the result. He is currently fighting charges of illegally trying to change the outcome.
A phone recording showed him telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that he “got 11,780 votes”.
A Georgia judge later dismissed charges related to that phone call, along with five other charges.
The Georgia prosecutor handling the case against Trump, Fani Willis, on Tuesday asked the appeals court to reinstate six of the dismissed cases.
The hand-counting law would have required three poll workers in the state’s more than 6,500 precincts to open sealed ballot boxes that have already been machine-scanned to count them and check for matches.
Critics say the law would have allowed election board members to delay or deny the state’s verification of election results.
In his ruling, Judge McBurney said that “the application of the 11th and a half hour countdown rule” would reduce public confidence in the outcome.
“This election season is full of events; January 6 memories [the 2021 US Capitol riot] they did not end, regardless of one’s view of that day’s glory or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and chaos to the electoral process destroys society,” he wrote.
On Tuesday evening, the former president held a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, where he urged his supporters to achieve a victory “too big to catch”, referring to his old unproven allegations that the 2020 election was rigged.
On the same day, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris continued her efforts to woo black voters, after polls showed that Trump was making inroads into this key demographic.
He urged black voters not to give up on politics, telling broadcaster Charlamagne Tha God (real name Lenard McKelvey): “The things we want and are willing to fight for will not happen if we don’t work and if we don’t participate.”
His campaign welcomed the temporary ban on the hand-counting law, calling it an attempt to sow doubt in the voting process.
In a separate ruling Monday, Judge McBurney ruled that election board members must certify the results of the votes, after the Republican nominee to the board refused to certify the results of the Georgia presidential primary earlier this year.
The certification case is one of many election-related cases going through Georgia courts, which is one of seven key states expected to decide the contest between Trump and Harris.
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