ATL Standard

As Georgia enters the final week of early in-person voting, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the state is heading toward a record voter turnout, according to a recent report by FOX 5 Atlanta. 

These numbers include more than 1.5 million in-person and over 155,000 via absentee ballots submitted thus far.

"One in five active voters have already gotten their vote in, and we will hit the 2-million-mark next week," Raffensperger said in a statement. "The strength of our voter registration system and our county election directors are on full display."

Earlier this month, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office reported the number of early voters was 36% higher than at the same time in 2018, with Greene (34.6), Rabun (33.5) and Towns (33.5%) being the counties with the highest voter turnout, the report states. 

This comes as Republicans have pointed to the record voting numbers as vindication for their 2021 rewrite of election state law, which now mandates added identification requirements to the mail voting process and severely curtails the number of drop boxes used during the 2020 cycle in urban counties, FOX 5 reports.

With this, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said it is wrong to “suggest there is a correlation between voter turnout and voter suppression because suppression is about barriers.” 

According to the report, the recently enacted law also makes it easier for anyone to challenge an individual voter’s eligibility and reduces the pathways for casting a provisional ballot in the event that a voter shows up in the wrong polling place on Election Day.