Trump’s RNC Dealt Humiliating Blow Over Voting in Key Swing State
A federal judge in Georgia threw out a lawsuit Tuesday from the Republican National Committee, which claimed that several counties had illegally accepted absentee ballots in person over the weekend.
The Southern District of Georgia’s chief judge, Stan R. Baker, said that Republicans’ complaint that ballot drop boxes could not be open past the end of the early voting period lacked a “basic level of statutory review and reading comprehension.”
Baker, a Donald Trump appointee, said that Republicans were blatantly attempting to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against [counties] less likely to vote for their candidate.”
Another Georgia judge had already rejected the lawsuit, which targets ballots delivered in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County, on Saturday.
During an emergency hearing Saturday, Judge Kevin M. Farmer of the Superior Court of Fulton County dismissed Republicans’ allegations, citing a provision in Georgia law stating that absentee ballots can be returned until the end of voting on Election Day, according to The New York Times.
Republicans also claimed that collecting ballots over the weekend had prevented poll watchers from monitoring election offices while ballots were being turned in. During the hearing, Nadine Williams, director of Fulton County elections, explained that poll watchers were allowed at polling stations but had never been allowed in county offices, according to The Guardian. Williams later clarified that the process should be open to the public.
On Tuesday, Baker said that Republicans’ so-called concerns about poll watchers were a “red herring,” and that weekend hours have been part of the election process for years.
Trump’s campaign, alongside state and national Republicans, sent letters to Athens-Clarke, Chatham, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties demanding that officials keep ballots received after Friday separate from the rest, in anticipation of legal challenges.
A second lawsuit filed in Savannah targeted the other five counties.
Nearly 700,000 Georgians have already cast their ballots, according to an afternoon update from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who said that at this rate, there are likely to be 1.1 million ballots cast in the state by the end of the day, for a total of more than 5 million votes from the state.
A total of 105 absentee ballots were returned in person to election offices in Fulton County on Saturday.