Federal court fast-tracks request for forensic examination of Dominion Voting machines

The three counties in question are Georgia's Cherokee, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties. The three counties encompass suburban areas north of Atlanta. Two of the three counties, Cobb and Gwinnett, are Democratic strongholds, while Cherokee is the largest Republican-leaning county in the state.

This comes a week after Powell filed a lawsuit alleging that Dominion Voting Systems machines used during last month's presidential election were vulnerable to hackers, allowing foreign agents the possibility to interfere in the election in Georgia. US District Judge Timothy Batten Sr. issued an order earlier this week preventing officials in the three counties from resetting their voting machines due to the suit.

"Defendants are hereby ENJOINED and RESTRAINED from altering, destroying, or erasing, or allowing the alteration, destruction, or erasure of, any software or data on any Dominion voting machine in Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee Counties," Batten wrote in his order. "This temporary restraining order shall remain in effect for ten days, or until further order of the Court, whichever comes first."

Batten refused to grant Powell's request to an audit of the elections in the counties, but did permit the pro-Trump lawyer to appeal the decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which expedited her appeal.

The Trump campaign has filed multiple lawsuits in Georgia concerning the results of the election, which Trump insists was plagued by voter fraud. The lawsuits, as with the Trump campaign's lawsuits in other battleground states, have thus far failed to overturn state election results.

A recount in Fulton County, the largest county in the state, was delayed following Dominion's mobile system crashing, for which a technician was brought in to fix the problem. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Secretary of State, has expressed frustration with the election process in the state calling it "dysfunctional."

"Us and our office, and I think the rest of the state, is getting a little tired of always having to wait on Fulton County and always having to put up with their dysfunction," Raffensperger complained. "They can still make it by our midnight Wednesday deadline, but they seem to want to make it a dramatic finish."

President Trump also alluded to the dysfunction of state ballot counting procedures in a lengthy speech delivered on Wednesday. "We used to have what was called election day, now we have election days, weeks, and months, and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous period of time," Trump said.