So don’t freak out, but you’re not going to believe how many Georgians showed up for day one of early voting

Back in 2020, when former President Donald Trump was up against President Joe Biden for the election, Georgia was a huge battleground state. On the first day of voting, 136,000 people showed up (a record at the time), and Biden ended up winning by 12,000 votes. That record was just smashed, as an estimated 252,000 cast their votes in Georgia today (Oct. 15), the first day of early voting. This does not bode well for Trump’s chances in the state.

Despite dealing with the lingering effects of Hurricane Helene and some troubling election rule changes (more on that in a bit), Georgia showed up. Gabe Sterling, an official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, called the turnout “spectacular” and said “We are running out of adjectives for this.”

Georgia has consistently voted Republican since 1996, so 2020 was the first time it went blue in more than 28 years. Because of the closeness of the tally, Georgia became a battleground for Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him.

This year, Republicans on the State Election Board have been fiddling with the rules regarding how the state counts its votes, leading to lawsuits by Democrats. Julie Adams, a Republican in the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, went to court saying that she could refuse to certify the election if she felt like the results were wrong. A judge in Georgia shot that down. Per Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney:

“If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced.”

Another questionable rule Republicans on the State Election Board are trying to pass is that ballots must be hand-counted by poll workers. Hand-counted ballots have been shown to be time consuming, less reliable, and more logistically harrowing than machine-counted ones, leading critics to accuse Republicans of simply trying to sow confusion into the election process to prop up their candidate.

Judge McBurney suggested this rule may have been passed a little too “late in the game” to be introduced during this election cycle. He has yet to rule on it, though.

Georgia has also seen a huge number of people request absentee ballots, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He said around 250,000 have requested the ballots so far, and that he expects that number to rise to 300,000. Around 5-6% of all voters will vote absentee in the state, he said.

By Georgia law, two Saturdays must be designated for early voting, and two Sundays can be added if a county wishes to do so. There are also going to be audits performed regularly on equipment.

“Pulling out a piece of equipment, a random audit on Election Day, bring it to headquarters and then verify that it is recording the votes accurately, that it has not been hacked by any bad actors out there,” Raffensperger said. Because that worked out so well last time.

All in all, it’s looking a bit sunnier for Democrats in Georgia, despite obvious attempts to make sure that doesn’t happen.