© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Georgia election official has blunt question for Stacey Abrams, Biden over record early voter turnout
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Georgia election official has blunt question for Stacey Abrams, Biden over record early voter turnout

Georgia election officials would like an apology from politicians — like President Joe Biden and Democrat Stacey Abrams — who claimed an election integrity law ushered in modern-day Jim Crow.

What is the background?

After Georgia passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021, Democrats claimed the law restricts voting rights and discriminates against minority voters.

"This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end. We have a moral and constitutional obligation to act," Biden said last March.

Abrams, on the other hand, called the law "racist" and described it as "a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie." She also claimed the law was passed because "more people of color voted, and it changed the outcome of elections in a direction that Republicans do not like."

What are Georgia officials saying?

Gabriel Sterling, COO for the Georgia secretary of state, says Democratic politicians owe Georgians an apology.

That is because Georgia voters have smashed early voter turnout records in the Peach State. By Sunday morning, 740,615 voters had voted in person. Through the same time period in the previous midterm election, just 428,413 voters had turned out to vote early.

In fact, between in-person and absentee ballots, nearly 817,000 Georgians have already cast their 2022 votes. That number continued to balloon on Sunday.

"How many turnout records do we have to break before Stacey Abrams and President Biden apologize to Georgia?" Sterling said in a statement to Fox News.

Meanwhile, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) explained, "We’re on track to break records in terms of voter turnout in every category."

What is the response?

According to those who oppose Georgia's election integrity law, record voter turnout does not prove the law does not restrict voting access.

"High turnout is not synonymous to voter access—rather the power of organizing and the urgency of voters to remove Brian Kemp and his allies’ far-right extremism from their communities," Jaylen Black, press secretary for Abrams' campaign, told Fox News.

Indeed, some in the media are already running with that narrative: that Georgia's law is about restricting voting access, but Democrats have negated its impacts through voter mobilization.

"The early results in Georgia are consistent with the outcomes of other voting restrictions. Evidence suggests voter suppression has little effect on turnout, because Democrats mobilize in response to restrictions, canceling out much or all of the suppressive effect," wrote Jonathan Chait in New York magazine.

Theories aside, if Georgia voters continue showing up en masse like they did during the first week of early voting, liberals will no longer be able to claim in good faith that Georgia voters have been restricted from voting.

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?