Georgia judge blocks ballot hand counting order

A judge in the US state of Georgia has blocked an order for ballots in November’s presidential election to be counted by hand.

Judge Robert McBurney ruled poll workers would not have received adequate 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 the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia election board last month, and Tuesday’s ruling was welcomed by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

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 328,000 people voted in person or by post on the first day of voting, officials said – more than double 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 and he has now been charged on eight counts with unlawfully trying to change the outcome, which he denies.

A phone call recording has him telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”.

The hand-count rule would have required three poll workers in the state’s more than 6,500 precincts to break open sealed boxed of ballots already scanned by machine to count them and check there was a match.

Critics said the rule would have allowed election board members to delay or deny the state’s certification of the election results.

In his ruling, Judge McBurney said the “11th-and-one-half-hour implementation of the hand count rule” would diminish public confidence in the outcome.

“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 [US Capitol attack] have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public,” he wrote.

On Tuesday evening, the former president held a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, where he called on supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” a reference to his longstanding false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

On the same day, Democratic candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris continued outreach efforts towards black voters, after polls indicated Trump was making inroads with the group.

She urged black voters not to give up on politics, telling radio host Charlamagne (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.”

Her campaign welcomed the temporary block of the hand count rule, 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.

The certification case is one of a number of election-related cases passing through courts in Georgia, one of seven key swing states expected to decide the contest between Trump and Harris.