Despite Joe Biden and other Democrats calling Georgia’s Election Integrity Act “Jim Crow 2.0,” the 2022 primary election early voting turnout has reached a record high.
857,401 voters cast their ballots leading up to Election Day: an all-time high for Georgia. But contrary to allegations on the Left that Georgia's new voting laws would suppress voters, this record turnout is actually the result of these recent election integrity reforms passed by the GOP-led state legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor Brian Kemp.
In 2021, the GOP-controlled state legislature passed the Election Integrity Act. The act institutes a multitude of election integrity reforms that revise procedures for carrying out elections, including the absentee ballot process, early voting, and a restructuring of the state election board.
Democrats and leftist groups have since denounced the act, as Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams accused Republican legislators of, “reviving Georgia’s dark past of racist voting laws.”
Key GOP leaders in Georgia pointed out that the law increased voter access to the polls while maintaining secure and fair elections.
“The bill expands early voting opportunities, secures drop boxes around the clock, reduces long lines at polling places, and implements the same voter ID requirement for absentee ballots that we have had for in-person voting for well over a decade,” stated Governor Kemp in a press release.
The 2022 election is a real test of the various claims regarding the Election Integrity Act. Early voting leading up to the primary election shows record turnout in Georgia – a 168% increase of total ballots cast since the last gubernatorial primary and a 212% increase since the 2020 presidential primary.
On the U.S. Senate floor on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted, "Georgia passed a voting law that was more open than the rules on the books in blue states... Georgians are getting back to in-person voting, a return to pre-pandemic norms, and doing so in huge numbers... These commonsense Republican laws appear to be achieving just what the American people want: making it easier to vote and harder to cheat."