Voters are going to the polls in five states Tuesday to select the nominees in primary elections.
Eyes are on Georgia, which could become a pivotal state in this year’s midterm elections. It’s also the focus of a battle for the Republican nomination for governor.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is backing the current Republican Governor Brian Kemp. Kemp didn’t support former President Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Georgia in 2020. So, Trump is backing a challenger, former Sen. David Perdue.
Polls show Kemp has a strong lead and is likely to avoid a runoff if he receives 50% of the vote.
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Stacey Abrams (AP Photo)
Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, a liberal activist, is also running for the governor’s seat but faced no challengers for her party’s nomination. She drew backlash from voters from both sides when she told a group of Democrats that Georgia is the “worst state in the country.”
Early voting has been far heavier than in the 2018 midterms, despite charges by President Biden and state Democrats that Georgia’s new voting laws would reduce turnout. Biden had even called it “Jim Crow on steroids,” an unsubstantiated reference to former laws that disenfranchised thousands of Black voters in the post-Civil War south. But other lawmakers and even the media called Biden out for misstating facts about the voter law.
The term “Jim Crow” refers to state and local laws in the segregated South that existed from after the Civil War until at least the mid-1960s. They restricted voting by requiring poll taxes or tests for Black voters, and they also restricted Black Americans’ employment, housing, and educational opportunities.
Even the Washington Post fact-checker gave Biden it’s worst rating on this issue – four Pinocchio’s – for falsely claiming that the Georgia law ends voting early so working people can’t vote.
As CBN News reported in January, Biden again invoked the civil rights battles of the 1960s, challenging senators to stand against what he called “voter suppression” in his backing of a federal voting rights bill. He also called out Republicans for “putting up obstacles” to voting.
In a clear repudiation of Biden’s claims, not only is the overall early voter turnout higher than ever before, but the early vote among minorities is higher than ever before, according to The National Review.
According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, as of May 18, 102,056 more black voters cast early votes in this year’s primary elections than in 2018 — this is more than three times the number of black Americans who cast early votes in 2018.
This led The Washington Post to admit that “voting is surging in Georgia despite controversial new election law.”
The National Review reports it is possible that this early vote turnout is just taking a bite out of the election day vote, and that turnout in this year’s Georgia primaries won’t be anything special. But right now, the early vote is about half of the total turnout in the 2018 primaries (not counting the GOP runoff).
“President Biden, Stacey Abrams, and their allies spread disinformation about Georgia’s election law,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Just the News. “Now, record early voting turnout has proved what I said from the beginning: Georgia’s Election Integrity Act struck a good balance between access and security.”
As CBN News reported in April of 2021, Republican political consultant Karl Rove wrote an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal that compared Georgia’s voting laws to Biden’s home state of Delaware.
- Georgia allows no-excuse early voting. Delaware does not. A new law will change that in 2022, but Georgia will still have seven more days of early voting.
- Georgia allows no-excuse mail-in ballots. Delaware does not.
- Georgia, criticized for capping the number of drop-off boxes, has more per capita than Delaware.
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