ATLANTA — Georgia polling locations may be a “ghost town” next Tuesday, Nov. 5, on what has historically been the busiest day for voters to cast their ballot, according to a senior state elections official.
To date, 45% of the 7.2 million registered voters in the battleground state have already voted since early voting began on Tuesday, Oct. 15.
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“The record turnout is fantastic,” said Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling in a press conference in Fulton County on Wednesday. “There is a possibility it could be a ghost town on Election Day.”
To date, 3.28 million votes have been cast between early voting and absentee ballots. Georgia could surpass 4 million early votes cast by Nov 1, when early voting ends, Sterling said.
Of that figure, 3 million votes were cast early, far outpacing the 2.1 million early votes at the same point in time in the 2020 election, which was the record.
More Georgians turned out to vote on the first day of early voting than any previous day in a general election in state history.
Hundreds of thousands of Georgians poured through the thousands of polling locations across its 159 counties, including in Fulton County, the epicenter of former President Donald Trump’s claims that election fraud in the region cost him the state and the entire 2020 election.
The high voter turnout to date is a major accomplishment for the state, as well as the Democratic and Republican parties, and could signal greater excitement among voters for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sterling warned that the state anticipates lawsuits regardless of who wins the election next week. The secretary of state’s office has spoken with Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) about lining up special assistant attorneys general for any forthcoming legal action from either campaign.
“We don’t know who’s going to win and who wins will decide who sues us essentially at the end of the day,” Sterling said. “If Vice President Harris wins, we expect Trump officials to sue us. If President Trump wins, we expect Harris officials to sue us. And, again if you’re getting sued by both sides, generally speaking, we feel like we’re doing a pretty good job.”
Ultimately, in Georgia, then-candidate Joe Biden beat Trump by a mere 11,779 votes out of almost 5 million votes cast in 2020. It was a huge victory for Democrats because the state had gone to Republican presidential candidates every election since 1996.
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However, it prompted Trump to second-guess the results. Trump alleged that Democrats manipulated the election in Fulton County, in particular, in order to boost the state’s overall count for Biden.
In the four years since then, Republicans have waged a war to protect the election and voting process, while Democrats have accused their counterparts of overstepping their legal authority.