Voters in Georgia turned out in record numbers as early voting for the upcoming Nov. 5 presidential election kicked off, featuring a race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, state officials reported on Tuesday.

By 4 p.m. EDT, at least 252,000 voters had cast their ballots at early-voting sites, nearly double the 136,000 who did so on the first day of early voting in the 2020 election, according to Gabriel Sterling, Georgia's second-highest election official. "Spectacular turnout," he noted on social media.

Trump, speaking at a campaign event in Atlanta, expressed optimism about the early voting numbers in Georgia. “The votes are coming in, and they’re coming in at a nice level for us,” he said.

Early voting, whether in person or by mail, has seen growing popularity in the U.S. In the 2020 election, nearly 1 in 7 voters cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, based on data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

While many Republicans opposed the expanded mail-in voting during the 2020 election, arguing it was less secure than in-person voting, Trump raised false claims of mail ballot fraud in an attempt to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Despite this, some Republican officials are now urging their supporters to vote early.

Nationwide, 5.5 million Americans have already voted this year, according to Election Lab. This is lower than the 27 million who had voted by this time in 2020 when voters were trying to avoid crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like several other states, Georgia has implemented stricter mail-voting laws, requiring voters to provide proof of identity when casting absentee ballots and limiting the number of ballot drop-off locations.

As a key battleground state, Georgia is expected to play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the election.

In a separate development, a Georgia judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a new rule requiring clerks to verify vote totals by hand-counting ballots for the 2024 election. Judge Robert McBurney ruled that it was necessary to halt the change as it introduced uncertainty just weeks before Election Day.

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