Trump rallies in Georgia with early voting underway

Former President Trump rallied in Georgia on Tuesday, the first day of early voting in the state, urging supporters to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day in the crucial battleground state.

“Early mail-in voting in your state is now underway, and early in-person is underway. But I’ll tell you what, I’m hearing very good things,” Trump said during his rally at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta.

“So if you have a ballot, return it immediately. If not, go tomorrow or as soon as you can. Go to the polls and vote,” Trump added. “Then, for the next 21 days, get everyone you know to get out and vote. We don’t want to take a chance.”

Tuesday marked the first day of early voting in Georgia, and voters turned out in droves to cast their ballots ahead of November’s election. Gabriel Sterling, an official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, posted on the social platform X that more than 300,000 votes were cast, easily surpassing the previous record for the first day of early voting in the state.

The former president has consistently cast doubt on the reliability of mail-in ballots, baselessly claiming they are prone to fraud. Trump routinely vows during campaign speeches that if he is elected in November, he will push for single-day voting on Election Day and tougher voter ID laws.

Trump’s comments have undercut GOP efforts to bank votes ahead of Election Day and eat into Democrats’ advantage among early voters.

Georgia is one of seven battleground states likely to decide the outcome of November’s election. President Biden carried Georgia in 2020 by roughly 11,000 votes, marking the first time a Democrat had won the state in a presidential election since 1992.

A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls out of Georgia shows Trump leading Vice President Harris in the state by roughly 1 percentage point. 

Harris is set to travel to Atlanta on Saturday after spending the week in the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Trump’s Tuesday remarks were largely similar to his typical rallies. He mocked Harris’s intelligence and suggested she did not understand questions about inflation, though the vice president has released proposals she has argued would lower costs.

The former president railed against immigration, saying he viewed it as the most important issue in the election alongside the economy. He played videos that attacked Harris’s views on taxation and mocked the military as “woke” under Democrats.

“This isn’t a rally. This is just a get-together,” Trump said.