Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit challenging Georgia vote counting

Vote counting in Atlanta. — (Image credit: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)

A judge has quickly dismissed at least one of the Trump campaign's attempts to stop vote counting in still-uncalled states.

President Trump's campaign and Georgia's GOP filed a petition Wednesday challenging vote counts in Savannah's Chatham County, alleging some absentee ballots that arrived too late were being counted. Chatham County Superior Court Judge James F. Bass quickly threw out the petition and the campaign's request to stop the count Thursday morning as Georgia continues to work out its close presidential race, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Republican election watchers testified Wednesday that they'd seen Chatham County officials counting a stack of 53 ballots they claimed came in after 7 p.m. Election Day, the cutoff for ballots to arrive in the state. But the Republicans showed no proof those ballots actually came in late, leading Bass to invalidate their request. Chatham County still has 17,000 absentee ballots left to count as of Thursday morning, of about 60,000 still uncounted throughout the state; Trump will have to win an estimated one-third of them to hold his lead and capture Georgia.

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Meanwhile the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in Nevada on Thursday challenging the legality of absentee ballots there. The campaign and Nevada's Republican Party contend about 10,000 people voted in the state even though they don't live there, writes The Nevada Independent. Nevada did mail ballots to voters out of state, including overseas and military voters and students at distant colleges.

Trump's campaign is also waging lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Michigan challenging the legality of votes there. Vote counting in Philadelphia briefly paused Thursday morning, but resumed after the Trump campaign agreed to a compromise on where they could stand to watch the vote tally.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.