What Voter Suppression? Abrams' Claims Swiftly Derailed as Georgians Turn Up to Vote
Georgia’s early voter turnout for the November midterm elections broke the state’s midterm early voting record Wednesday despite President Joe Biden and other Democrats previously declaring that the state’s election integrity laws resembled “Jim Crow”-era restrictions.
From the opening of the polls Monday through Wednesday, 434,546 Georgians voted early and 38,214 of those individuals voted absentee, according to the office of Georgia’s secretary of state.
“Yesterday’s total continues to surpass the previous midterm Early Voting records made in the 2018 midterm election, and the cumulative total is only 15,000 votes under the Presidential election cumulative total at this point in 2020,” the office said in a news release Thursday.
After Georgia passed a law in March 2021 that ramped-up verification procedures and placed restrictions on absentee ballots, Biden said the new rule was “Jim Crow in the 21st century” and accused the state’s Republicans of engaging in voter suppression.
Georgia’s law requires absentee drop boxes to be available in each of the state’s 159 counties but limits the number each county can provide and mandates that boxes must be located inside the county’s election office or early voting locations.
Absentee ballots also must be verified by photo ID instead of the previous signature-match verification process.
Biden’s Justice Department filed a legal challenge in response to Georgia’s law in June 2021, claiming the new voting rules were “racially discriminatory.”
In December, Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams decried the Georgia law and similar legislation in other states, telling The Associated Press, “I will do everything in my power to make certain that these new onerous voter suppression laws do not effectively block voters from their right to vote.” She has claimed the law is racist.
Nearly 150,000 black voters have cast their ballots so far in Georgia, with the demographic accounting for 34.4 percent of early voting, according to the University of Florida’s United States Election Project, which aggregates state voting records.
In spite of that, Abrams claimed on Tuesday that the state was still engaging in voter suppression, attributing the high early voting numbers to Democratic efforts.
“Yesterday, we saw record turnout for early voting. … It does not mean that voter suppression doesn’t exist. … We know that voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia! But we’re stronger, we’re faster and we’re better than it,” Abrams said during a rally.
Stacey Abrams: “Yesterday, we saw record turnout for early voting…It does not mean voter suppression doesn’t exist…We know that voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia!” pic.twitter.com/Z4Pwrn8PLi
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 19, 2022
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is in a battle with Republican challenger Herschel Walker, also alleged that Georgia’s bill targeted minorities’ rights.
“Some people don’t want some people to vote,” Warnock said in an April news release.
The White House, Abrams’ campaign and Warnock did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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A version of this article appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation website.
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