ATLANTA — The Trump campaign and the Georgia GOP's challenge to vote counting in Savannah was rejected on Thursday by a Chatham County Superior Court judge.
The campaign had filed a petition that raised questions about whether Chatham County election officials were following Georgia law to ensure no late-arriving absentee ballots were counted. State law requires any ballot that arrives after 7 p.m. on Election Day to be invalidated.
A pair of Republican election watchers who had raised concerns on Wednesday about the process testified in the video-conferenced hearing. They both testified about concerns about the process they observed involving a stack of 53 ballots, but offered no evidence that the ballots had come in after the deadline.
After listening to testimony for more than a hour, including a details outlining the procedures the Chatham County registrar's office uses to receive and track absentee ballots, Judge James F. Bass swiftly threw out the case.
"I'm denying the request and dismissing the petition," he said.
As of Thursday morning, Chatham has more than 17,000 absentee ballots to count and process as President Donald Trump was trying to hold off a surge in Georgia by former Vice President Joe Biden. There are more than 60,000 absentee ballots still left to count in the state. Biden had pulled within 15,000 votes of the president.
