After Two Years Of Controversy, Record Breaking Georgia Voter Turnout

Georgia voting turnout is surging to record breaking numbers in the 2022 midterm election, as voters go to the polls after two years of legislative and legal wrangling over voting reforms.

Washington Post:

When the Spalding County Board of Elections eliminated early voting on Sundays, Democrats blamed a new state law and accused the Republican-controlled board of intentionally thwarting “Souls to the Polls,” a get-out-the-vote program among Black churches to urge their congregations to cast ballots after religious services.

But after three weeks of early voting ahead of Tuesday’s primary, record-breaking turnout is undercutting predictions that the Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 would lead to a falloff in voting. By the end of Friday, the final day of early in-person voting, nearly 800,000 Georgians had cast ballots — more than three times the number in 2018, and higher even than in 2020, a presidential year.

Voting-rights groups and Democrats say they have changed their strategies to mobilize voters under the new rules. In Spalding County, for instance, local activists moved Souls to the Polls to a Saturday, and they defiantly promised that they would work twice as hard if that was what it took to protect voter access.

“It was a direct way to send a message to the Black community that they’re in charge now,” said Elbert Solomon, vice chairman of the county Democratic committee. “But every day we get people walking through the door, White and Black. A lot of people are concerned about their democracy.”

Defenders of the law accused Democrats, including President Biden and Stacey Abrams, the presumed Democratic nominee for Georgia governor this year, of hyping accusations of voter suppression because it resonated with their base and helped them raise money. They say the turnout numbers prove that the rhetoric around the law was false.

“Abrams and President Biden lied to the people of Georgia and the country for political gain,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said. “From day one, I said that Georgia’s election law balanced security and access, and the facts have proved me right.”

The state’s GOP-controlled legislature became one of the first of dozens across the nation last year to approve restrictions on how ballots are cast and counted following the 2020 presidential election, when then-President Donald Trump attacked, without evidence, the validity of results in six states he lost, including Georgia.

The Election Integrity Act, also known as Senate Bill 202, unleashed a furious backlash when it passed. Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0.” Abrams accused its authors of “reviving Georgia’s dark past of racist voting laws.” The clothing retailer Patagonia condemned the bill, and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of Atlanta.

The law imposes new identification requirements for those casting ballots by mail, curtails the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots, makes it a crime for third-party groups to hand out food and water to voters standing in line, blocks the use of mobile voting vans — as Fulton County did in 2020 after purchasing two vehicles at a cost of more than $700,000 — and prevents local governments from directly accepting grants from the private sector for election administration.

But much of the rhetoric directed at the bill was actually based on draft legislation that was subsequently scaled back. Local and national organizations, including the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, had put enormous pressure on state Republicans to strip out some of the more contentious provisions. Republicans agreed to drop, for instance, language barring most Georgians from voting by mail and curtailing early voting on weekends. They even expanded early-voting hours in the final bill.

Georgia’s 2022 primary is on Tuesday, May 24th.