According to Georgia secretary of state’s office, there’s been a 160 percent increase in early voting in the state compared with the same period in 2020 (a presidential year). Over 250,000 Georgians have cast early in-person or absentee ballots — 146,425 Republicans and 106,188 Democrats as of this writing. If the trend continues into the midterms — it’s still early, of course, but it’s a reasonable assumption — Georgia will end up with more ballots cast than ever before.
When the state passed its voter-integrity law in 2021, Joe Biden called it “odious,” “pernicious,” “vicious,” “unconscionable,” a “subversion and suppression,” the “21st-century Jim Crow,” and a sure sign of the emerging “autocracy.” The Justice Department sued the state, even though, in many ways the law made voting easier, eliminating signature matching, expanding early voting, and leaving polls open longer. It’s going to be difficult to continue to claim that voter-ID laws are suppressing turnout when an increasing number of people seem perfectly comfortable dealing with a minimal, widely supported prerequisite to casting a ballot.