In-person early voting is now concluded for the Georgia runoff election after a single week of in-person early voting. What does the early vote tell us of the trajectory of the election?
A major difficulty in making a forecast is changes Georgia imposed on election officials by way of the state’s new voting law, SB 202. Gov. Kemp signed the bill while African-American state representative Park Cannon was arrested for knocking on the doors trying to again access to the closed event.
Georgia’s law compressed the election timeline in two important ways.
First, the time between the general and runoff election was cut in half. This meant there was less time for election officials to prepare for the runoff. There was less time for weary staff and volunteer poll workers — who are needed to staff polling sites — to recover from the general election. There was less time for voters to request a mail ballot if they desired one.
Second, the early voting period was compressed from three weeks to two weeks. In an unanimous decision, Georgia’s Supreme Court — not known as a liberal court — rejected the Georgia Secretary of State’s office’s order that Saturday early voting following Thanksgiving was forbidden by Georgia’s law. Oh yes, that shortened time period between the general and runoff elections includes Thanksgiving. With much uncertainty and the compressed timeline, not all local Georgia election offices were perhaps unable to provide the same service they did in the general election.
At least 1.8 million people voted by mail or in-person early in the Georgia runoff election. The over three hundred thousand voters on three days broke daily records for in-person early voting in a Georgia midterm election.
Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger praises the high daily early voting turnout numbers during the runoff election as evidence “…claims of voter suppression in Georgia are conspiracy theories no more valid than Bigfoot.”
The Bigfoot analogy is apt, because many Georgians would see their feet swell while standing in long lines. In their wisdom, Georgia Republicans in passing SB 202 also forbade outside groups or individuals from providing water or seats to people who stood in voting lines up to three hours. This travesty was highly predictable. Narrowing a doorway means that people are not going to be able to pass through it as quickly.
So with this important context in mind, what does Georgia’s early voting tell us about how the election may play out?
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