CNN –
A record number of early votes were cast in Georgia on Tuesday as residents headed to the polls in a battleground state grappling with the fallout from Hurricane Helen and controversial changes in election administration that sparked a wave of lawsuits.
More than 328,000 votes were cast Tuesday, Gabe Sterling of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office said on X. “So, with the record breaking first day of early voting and accepting absentees, we’ve had over 328,000 votes cast so far,” he said.
The previous first-day record was 136,000 in 2020, Sterling said.
The swing state is one of the most closely watched swing states in this election, as former President Donald Trump is trying to regain it after losing there to President Joe Biden by a small margin four years ago, which prompted Trump and his allies to press in vain to overturn his defeat.
Those efforts loomed large this year as new changes to how the state conducts elections were approved by Republican members of the state Board of Elections, prompting Democrats and others to file legal challenges, many of which have yet to be resolved even as Election Day approaches. .
Despite Tuesday’s high turnout, the process appears to have gone more smoothly this year for some Atlanta-area voters who spoke with CNN.
“The last time I voted, I voted in the city and the lines were out the door. They only had three people working,” Corinne Canada said. “So people honestly started leaving because that was how it was. Yeah, like: “That’s too long.” “I can’t sit here and wait. I have to get back to work.” But here, no, it was easy.”
Parts of the state continue to recover from Hurricane Helen, which struck the United States last month and caused devastation in several other states in the Southeast. Georgia election officials say absentee ballots went out by the U.S. Postal Service as scheduled and were not affected by the storm.
“So far, we have seen just over 250,000 voters request an absentee ballot. “Maybe in the next week or so, we’ll see that spike up to 300,000 — which we think will likely look like about 5-6% of all voters will vote absentee this cycle,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said Tuesday.
Some new state laws that have tightened absentee ballot rules and imposed limits on the availability of drop boxes may make the option less attractive than early in-person voting, experts say.
While many drop boxes were available 24/7 in 2020, there will be fewer of them this year, and they will be at elections offices or early voting sites with hours that tend to mimic regular business hours.
It is also possible that the state will continue to see large numbers of early votes since Georgia law now mandates two Saturdays of early voting and allows for one Sunday of early voting if the county desires.
Raffensperger said Tuesday that safeguards are in place for a safe election, and that in addition to each race being audited, officials will also randomly review voting equipment for examination.
“A piece of equipment is pulled, they do a random audit on Election Day, they bring it to headquarters and then they verify that it accurately records votes, that it hasn’t been hacked by any bad actors there,” Raffensperger told reporters.
Raffensperger, who was in Trump’s crosshairs after the 2020 election, recertified the results after a statewide recount in December 2020 confirmed that Biden beat Trump by just 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million votes cast in the Peach State. .
Meanwhile, state judges are examining a number of new rules passed by the Trump-backed Republican majority on the state Board of Elections that Democrats warn could inject post-election “chaos” into Georgia.
After a marathon hearing Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney temporarily blocked a rule that would have required officials to manually count the number of votes cast at each polling place, criticizing state election officials for approving it so close to Election Day. The rule will be under the microscope of another state judge on Wednesday as part of cases brought against it by state and national Democrats and civil rights groups.
McBurney is also still considering a separate rule the board passed in August that would require local election officials to conduct a “reasonable investigation” of election results before certifying them — a mandate that Democrats say could give county election officials broad authority to delay or reject altogether. Their certification of the results “in the context of searching for alleged electoral irregularities.”
But McBurney sought to remove any doubt about certification in a ruling this week in which he said local election officials have a “firmly mandated obligation to certify election results” in the days after the election — dealing a blow to the GOP election official she had asked to rule that her duties The certificate is “discretionary”.
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In line in the Atlanta area, two voters who identified as Democrats said they cast their ballots for Harris in an attempt to avoid the kind of “chaos” they said was surrounding Trump.
Faye Ainsworth said: “It is imperative that we vote today simply because we want to prevent as much chaos as possible because Donald Trump has proven to be the most vicious, uneducated and racist person we have ever encountered.”
“Well, we have a crazy person running for president, and a very qualified young woman opposing him,” said Joseph Henry King Jr., 77.
Kareem Rosschandler, 32, who describes himself as an independent, said he would vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to send a message to Democrats about their support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
“We’ve been calling for a gun ban for the past year and they haven’t responded, and all the protests and signs won’t matter if we don’t get this message where it really matters, which is on the ballot.”
“I mean, the Green Party wants to get rid of the Electoral College,” Rosshandler added. “And I think that’s great because now we have a two-party system, and the only thing worse than that is a one-party system, and we’re not far from that.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Munira Al-Samra contributed to this report.
