A judge in the US state of Georgia has blocked seven new state election rules favoured by Republican Donald Trump after finding that they would unnecessarily interfere with the voting process.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox on Wednesday struck down a rule that requires that ballots be counted by hand, and two others that required county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the election before certifying the result.
“The rules at issue exceed or are in conflict with specific provisions of the Election Code. Thus, the challenged rules are unlawful and void,” Judge Cox wrote in his ruling.
Early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday, with record numbers casting their votes in the key swing state ahead of election day on 5 November.
More than 459,000 people voted in person or by post on the first day of voting, officials said – more than triple the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.
Around five million votes for president were cast in Georgia that year, with Democrat Joe Biden winning the state by just under 12,000.
Trump refused to accept the result. He is currently fighting criminal charges that he unlawfully tried to change the outcome.
A phone call recording has him telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”.
A judge overseeing the Georgia case later dismissed the charge related to that phone call, and five other charges.
The Georgia prosecutor pursuing the case against Trump, Fani Willis, on Tuesday asked an appeals court to re-instate the six dismissed counts.
The hand count rule dismissed Wednesday would have required three poll workers in the state’s more than 6,500 precincts to break open sealed boxes of ballots already scanned by machines to count them and check there was a match.
Supporters of the rule argued it would add minutes rather than hours to the count.
Critics said the rule would have allowed election board members to delay or deny the state’s certification of the election results.
The rules had been criticised by Democrats since they were passed in August by the Republican-controlled State Election Board.
In a speech that month, Trump praised the Republican board members, calling them “pit bulls fighting for transparency, honesty and victory”.
In his ruling, Judge Cox also criticised a rule relating to “reasonable inquiry”, saying it “adds an additional and undefined step into the certification process”.
The rule allowed local election boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before certifying them, but did not define what the term meant.
Supporters argued that it would make sure vote totals were counted accurately before they were signed off.
The hand count rule had been blocked in a ruling on Tuesday from a different judge, who found that “11th-and-one-half-hour implementation of the hand count rule” would diminish public confidence in the outcome and lead to “administrative chaos”.
“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 [the 2021 US Capitol riot] have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy,” wrote Judge Robert McBurney.
“Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”
Harris’ campaign welcomed the hand count ruling on Tuesday, calling it an attempt to sow doubt in the voting process.
In a separate decision on Monday, Judge McBurney ruled that election board members must certify vote results, after a Republican appointee to the board refused to certify the results of Georgia’s presidential primary earlier this year.
Georgia, nicknamed the Peach State, is one of seven key swing states expected to decide the contest between Trump and Harris.
