Georgia strikes again, breaking another voting record Monday. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, more than 301,000 early voters came to cast their ballots in a single day for the 2022 senate runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and GOP challenger Herschel Walker. Gabriel Sterling, the Interim Deputy Secretary of State, announced that the voting record smashed the previous record of 233,252 votes in 2018.
Democrats warned that the 2021 voter integrity law would deprive millions of voters in Georgia. But that doesn’t appear to be the case, as Georgia voters have been off to the races this year. President Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders warned the legislation would revive Jim Crow, and despite those warnings, more than two million people voted through early voting and absentee ballots.
"We have never seen a Sunday that big. […] We saw nearly 90,000 voters yesterday, 130 percent more voters altogether. So that was a huge day."
Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling comments on voter turnout for the U.S. Senate runoff. https://t.co/8Suzc9tlvC pic.twitter.com/K5Y226QHKt
— The Hill (@thehill) November 29, 2022
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claims that voter turnout doesn’t disprove the Democratic theory of voter suppression. Jean-Pierre spoke of the new record and said, “high turnout and voter suppression can take place at the same time … but I will leave it there without being able to dig into the politics of this.”
Early voting will be available to Georgians until Friday. Many voters headed to the polls at once, resulting in record-high turnouts in only a few days. After the effective date of the integrity law, early voting was trimmed down from three weeks to only one week. The final election day is set for December 6 for the Senate race between Warnock and Walker. Run-off became necessary when neither candidate won a majority in the November 8 general election.
Warnock was first elected to the Senate in January 2021. Walker is a newcomer to politics breaking the mold. Walker’s campaign was based on the ties between Warnock and President Joe Biden. Neither Walker nor Warnock secured more than 50% of the vote during the general election on November 8, moving the senate seat to an official run-off election. Polls show the two candidates neck in neck.
