US judge denies Republican bid to block some Georgia absentee ballots

By Luc Cohen

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday denied a bid by Republicans to block seven counties in the battleground state of Georgia from accepting some absentee ballots, and chided the party’s lawyers for what he termed discrimination against political opponents.

The Republican National Committee on Sunday sued the seven counties in Savannah federal court for allowing voters to return absentee ballots over the weekend and on Monday. They said the early voting period was supposed to close on Friday, and asked the court to block the counties from accepting the ballots.

In a telephone hearing on Tuesday, which is Election Day nationwide, U.S. District Judge Stan Baker said the counties Republicans were targeting had all been Democratic-leaning in previous elections.

“I would only be invalidating votes in the select counties that plaintiffs have cherry picked based on nothing more than the past political preferences of the citizens in those counties,” said Baker, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, who is again his party’s presidential candidate.

Baker said the Republicans were asking him to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against citizens that are less likely to vote for their candidate.”

Georgia is one of seven battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the election between Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. President Joe Biden won the southern state in 2020, the first Democratic victory there since 1992.

“Georgia is making its voice heard,” Harris campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak said in a post on X.

A spokesperson for the RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York, editing by Deepa Babington)