Why Did Mail-in Ballots in Georgia Plunge by One Million?

[Celerity]

GOP voting laws are behind the forced run-off in the Peachtree State Senate race.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/why-did-mail-in-ballots-in-georgia-plunge-by-one-million/



Absentee ballots plunged from a total of 1.28 million in November 2020 to a little over 240,000 in last week’s general election in Georgia. Given that mail-in ballots in Georgia favor Democrats two-to-one, it is reasonable to conclude this breathtaking 81% drop of over one million mail-in votes likely cost Sen. Raphael Warnock an outright victory. Georgia law requires a candidate to win by 50% of the vote plus one.

Though incumbent Warnock led his Republican challenger Herschel Walker by 35,202 votes, that still places him 23,000 votes short of the 50% threshold. As a result, Warnock is now forced into a run-off with Walker. Despite its massive size, the one-million vote decline was fogged over by press releases by Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, who announced, “Georgia’s record breaking early turnout concluded with 2,288,889 voters casting their ballot during Early Voting.”

How could the media have missed the one-million vote elephant that disappeared from the room? Without reading the fine print — early voting reports commonly include absentee ballots received — this supposed jump in early voting was quoted without qualification. This chimerical leap in voting was touted by Gov. Brian Kemp as a response to accusations by voting rights attorneys, including Gerald Griggs of the NAACP, that the 98 pages of restrictions to voting incorporated in Georgia’s new voting law, Senate Bill 202, suppressed minority voting.



In his victory speech, Kemp said, “Senate Bill 202, Georgia’s Election Integrity Act — you remember, they called it ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ and ‘Jim Crow with a suit and tie’— according to the media, President Biden and their far left allies. If you support photo ID on absentee ballots, you’re a racist,” a charge put to rest by the alleged leap in voting. Key provisions of SB202 included substantial new restrictions on casting mail-in ballots, a voting method now favored by minority — read, Democratic — voters. It was crafted by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Kemp last year just after the Democrats swept the state with victories by President Joe Biden and Senate candidates Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

snip

[rzemanfl]

1. K&R.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

2. It's really hard to compare mail-in voting from 2020 to 2022.

First, 2020 was a presidential year, which always has higher turnout. Second, and more important, do we know how many of those who voted by mail last time decided to vote early in-person this time?

[TigressDem]

3. PLANNED vote challenges

Since most of them were challenged without merit they are being looked at and hopefully cleared of suspicion.


https://truthout.org/articles/georgias-governor-deputized-gop-vigilantes-to-challenge-149000-voters/

[crickets]

4. K&R for visibility.