When Georgia Governor Brian Kemp pushed ahead with a voting reform package in the wake of the 2020 election, it was assailed by the Left as “Jim Crow 2.0” and led to, among other things, Stacey Abrams pushing Major League Baseball to take its all-star game out of Georgia, costing business owners and the state millions.
The claim was that new rules and limits placed on voting were overt acts of voter suppression, and it was a claim that national media outlets bought into pretty quickly and readily. Abrams spearheaded the movement to label it as “Jim Crow 2.0”, but voters weren’t buying it. The legislature passed it, Kemp signed it, and everyone else pretty much moved on.
Well, here we are in 2022, and Georgia has a U.S. Senate race everyone is watching, not to mention a highly-publicized governor’s race and several key statewide races. So, did the voter suppression claims pan out?
Spoiler: No.
Georgia voters turned out for the first day of early voting in record numbers, with ballots cast already exceeding one-day early voting results in the 2018 midterms.
On Monday, 131,318 ballots were cast in-person. In the 2018 midterm elections, 70,849 ballots were cast in-person on the first day of early voting, according to a release from the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
Monday’s results inched close to the 136,739 ballots cast on the first day of early voting in 2020, a presidential election year.
Additionally, 11,759 absentee ballots have been submitted so far this year, bringing the total number of ballots to 143,077 through Monday.
Early voting in Georgia will continue through Nov. 4.
It continued to grow yesterday.
Those hardest hit are, of course, the Democrats.
There are a lot of highly motivated voters this election cycle. Nationally, the economy and crime are among the biggest factors. In the state, Kemp’s in good standing with voters, and Abrams is frankly not very popular. What’s more, her campaign has focused on abortion and other issues voters simply do not care about as much as they care about those “kitchen table” issues.
But the fact that so many are motivated to go out and vote, and are able to do so, is a pretty big indictment against the “Jim Crow 2.0” hysterics of the Democratic Party and the media. They once again bought into their own talking points at the expense of reality – that the law added to early voting and didn’t do any of the things the panicking pundits claimed it would – and it seems like they are completely unprepared for what’s about to happen in Georgia.