GOP sees legal battle falter in Georgia ahead of runoffs | TheHill

Republicans in Georgia suffered back-to-back defeats in court this week amid their push for more restrictive voting rules ahead of the state’s critical Senate runoffs.The rulings come amid a brewing legal war over the Jan. 5 runoffs, which could help shape how the contests are fought and perhaps even which party controls the Senate when President-elect Joe BidenJoe BidenLos Angeles mayor announces he won't be joining Biden administration Jill Biden: Doctorate is one of the things I'm 'most proud of' READ: Deb Haaland's official statement on historic nomination to Interior secretary MORE takes office.In roughly a half-dozen ongoing court fights, Democratic-allied voting rights groups and Republicans are clashing over the number of early voting calendar days, the use of drop-boxes and the stringency of ballot signature-verification requirements.But recent court decisions show the uphill battle Republicans face in their legal disputes.In one case, a federal judge on Thursday handed a blistering defeat to Republican litigants who sought to impose tighter voting restrictions ahead of the runoff elections. Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election’s higher-than-average volume of mail ballots subjected the vote to widespread fraud, an assertion that no state or federal court has accepted in any of the dozens of pro-Trump’s lawsuits filed after his defeat.But GOP sources say they believe that early in-person voting, which began in Georgia on Monday, will help them make up the deficit.“It ain’t Republicans mailing in their ballots,” one GOP operative in the state said.