Georgia Judge Halts Hand Counting of Presidential Election Ballots

A Georgia judge has blocked an order that would have required ballots in November’s presidential election to be counted manually, citing concerns over the lack of training for poll workers and the potential for “administrative chaos.” The ruling, issued by Judge Robert McBurney, prevents the implementation of the hand-counting mandate, which was passed by the Georgia election board’s pro-Trump majority last month.

Judge McBurney expressed that poll workers, untrained for such a large-scale operation, would face overwhelming challenges in handling millions of ballots, especially with early voting already underway. This decision comes at a crucial time, as Georgia’s voters have turned out in record numbers, with over 328,000 people casting their votes in person or by post on the first day alone, surpassing the previous 2020 record of 136,000.

The ruling has been welcomed by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and other opponents of the hand-counting order. Georgia, a key battleground state, played a significant role in the 2020 election, where Democrat Joe Biden won by just under 12,000 votes out of nearly five million cast.

With early voting already in progress and Election Day set for November 5, the ruling ensures that the state’s usual machine-counting process will remain in place, avoiding any disruption that could have impacted the electoral process.