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A record number of voters in Georgia turned in their ballots on Tuesday, the first day of early voting in the state, as a higher court judge blocked a rule that would have required poll workers to count ballots by hand.

According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, approximately 320,000 people voted early in Georgia. Another 24,000 people have already cast their postal votes.

The previous record for first-day early voting was in 2020, when about 136,000 ballots were cast.

Voters may have been motivated to vote early because the state made a number of controversial changes to election law – all passed due to election integrity concerns raised by Donald Trump about the state following the 2020 presidential election.

That includes a law that would have required poll workers to break open sealed ballots and count them by hand to ensure the number of ballots matched the total counted by machines. Election workers would not have been required to count the number of votes for each candidate.

A Republican-majority state election board passed the law in September. It would have taken effect on Oct. 22 — a week after early voting began and two weeks before Election Day.

However, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Tuesday blocked the law from taking effect, saying it was “too much, too late.”

“The administrative chaos that will – and need not – ensue is in complete contradiction to the commitments of our election boards (and the SEB) to ensure that our elections are fair, lawful and orderly,” McBurney wrote in his order issued Tuesday evening.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, both Republicans, warned the election board that implementing the rule so close to Election Day would be difficult and chaotic.

But Trump-backed election board members went ahead anyway, voting 3-2 to implement it, along with a series of other election changes they claim were intended to create “stability” and strengthen integrity.

Voters in the state had been warned that the changes would cause delays in election results – likely prompting them to show up to the polls early.

Although board members denied that the changes had anything to do with partisan views, they undoubtedly reflect concerns and false allegations of fraud raised by Trump, the Republican nominee.

After losing the 2020 election, Trump falsely claimed he had won and illegally fraudulent ballots were cast to help President Joe Biden win – Georgia was one of the states against which Trump’s claims were made.

Trump and 18 others have been indicted in Fulton County for allegedly attempting to overturn the state’s election results by implementing a fraudulent voting program. This process is still ongoing but has been temporarily paused.