The Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Stan Baker rejected on Tuesday an effort by Georgia Republicans to prevent seven counties in the Peach State from accepting absentee ballots, in what he described as targeting Democratic-leaning areas in a bid to "tip the scales" of the election, according to Reuters.
The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit on Sunday in a Savannah federal court, challenging the decision to allow voters to return their absentee ballots in person after Republicans had argued that the window to turn in absentee ballots for early voting had closed on Friday.
During the hearing over the telephone on Tuesday, Baker stated that if we were to side with Republicans in their lawsuit against the counties that make up the Democrats' base in Georgia, he "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."
Baker further remarked that the request sought to disadvantage voters less likely to support the Republican candidate, which he characterized as discriminatory.