More than 459,000 people voted in person or by mail on the first day of voting, officials said, more than triple the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.
About five million presidential votes were cast in Georgia that year, and Democrat Joe Biden won the state by just under 12,000 votes.
Trump refused to accept the result. He is currently fighting a criminal charge that he illegally tried to change the result.
On the recorded phone call, he tells Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
A Georgia judge later dismissed the charge related to that phone call and five other charges.
Georgia State Attorney Fannie Willis, who is leading the case against Trump, on Tuesday asked the appeals court to reinstate the six dismissed counts.
The hand-count rule would have required three poll workers at the state’s more than 6,500 precincts to break open sealed ballot boxes already scanned by machine to count them and check for a match.
Critics said the rule would allow election commission members to delay or deny state certification of election results.
In his ruling, Justice McBurney said that “enforcement of the 11-and-a-half hour hand count rule” would reduce public confidence in the result.
“This election season is busy; the memories of January 6th (the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot) have not gone away, regardless of how one sees the glory or infamy of the date. Anything that adds uncertainty and confusion to the electoral process is harmful to the public,” he said. wrote.
