Dire predictions about the state of democracy followed Georgia’s enactment of a
voting reform
law ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. It whipped up a frenzy of outrage by Democrats, sparking economic boycotts of Georgia and countless protest marches against the allegedly
Jim Crow-style
voter suppression measure.
The facts have not borne out those concerns, to put it mildly. That narrative has been dramatically upended by Georgia’s record-smashing early midterm voting.
By Halloween, some 1,660,551
Georgians
cast an early vote, towering over the 1,053,531 early vote count during the same period in the 2018 election,
according
to the Georgia Secretary of State office. The apparent voter surge, which comes on the heels of record-breaking primary turnout earlier this year, has led Republicans to say Democrats cried wolf with their election reform grumblings.
“This past May, in our primaries, we again had record turnout in the Republican primary and the Democratic primary. In Georgia, it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) chided his Democratic foe, Stacey Abrams, during their first debate of the 2022 midterm cycle.
Republicans in the House, meanwhile, believe President Joe Biden should “apologize” for characterizing Georgia’s election law as
voter suppression
, saying that the
strong midterm turnout
shows Biden is peddling misinformation.
Republican members of the House Administration Committee on Nov. 2
sent a letter
to the president rehashing Biden’s previously charged rhetoric opposing the 2021 GOP-led election law — including admonishing “Jim Crow 2.0” voting restrictions and
inaccurately
claiming Georgia ended voting hours early.
“In the interest of ensuring American voters may have confidence in elections processes and outcomes, we demand you immediately cease spreading election misinformation, rescind your previous statements, and apologize to the American public,” Reps. Rodney Davis (R-IL), Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), and Bryan Steil (R-WI) wrote. “We look forward to your apology to the people of the State of Georgia.”
During the 2022 primaries, roughly 1.9 million Georgians cast ballots, greatly eclipsing the nearly 1.2 million that voted in the 2018 election,
per
FiveThirtyEight. This included a
massive uptick
among minorities.
Abrams had railed against state Republican efforts to bolster election security,
dubbing
the gambit a “redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.”
The Election Integrity Act of 2021, also called S.B. 202, made a slew of electoral reforms, including voter ID requirements for absentee voting, the codification of drop box use, the right to challenge an unlimited amount of voter registrations, a ban on private distribution of gifts within 150 feet of polling sites, and shortening the window voters have to request absentee ballots, among other changes.
Republicans pursued S.B. 202 against the backdrop of former President Donald Trump raging against Georgia’s election laws, peddling false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him there. Republicans argued the law was needed to restore confidence in election results, but Democrats countered it was a thinly veiled ruse aimed at stifling minority voter turnout.
Numerous Democrats and voter activists, including Biden, echoed Abrams’s claims likening the measure to the Jim Crow-era policies that swept the South following Reconstruction. Jim Crow featured a litany of laws blatantly aimed at suppressing African American turnout via poll taxes, all-white primaries, and literacy tests.
“Parts of our country are backsliding into the days of Jim Crow, passing laws that harken back to the era of poll taxes, when black people were made to guess how many jelly beans were in a jar or count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap before they could cast their ballot,” the president
said
last year.
Despite Republican calls for an apology, one has not been forthcoming from Biden or Abrams, who lost the 2018 governor’s race to Kemp by 50.2% to 48.8%. Critics of the Georgia voting law, have, in fact, shrugged off the high voter turnout and insisted that it doesn’t undermine their suppression qualms.
“High turnout and voter suppression can take place at the same time,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
said
late last month. “They don’t have to be — one doesn’t have to happen on its own. They can be happening at the same time.”
Abrams has similarly insisted the voting surge came in spite of suppressive policies.
“Voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia. And they are pushing this argument that says that because we have record turnout, there is no suppression. That is completely wrong. That’s like saying because more people are in the water, there are fewer sharks,” Abrams
said
on MSNBC in late October. “Voter turnout is the anecdote to voter suppression. It is not proof that there is no suppression.”
